I have these two crazy and terrifying friends who make paella like nobody’s business.
Paella is thought to be this mysterious seafood thing with rice: it’s orange, it’s expensive, and it takes forever to cook.
All lies, they say.
Let me define crazy and terrifying. These two were sailing around the world on a 27-foot sloop before GPS, with no engine, and got blown onto a lee shore in Namibia, which I didn’t know was even a place. They somehow made it out alive, but the surf destroyed their boat and all of their possessions, which were mostly racks of wine and paperback books on meditation, which might be why they were blown ashore to begin with.
One of them was a chef and the other an accountant. They made a living working in local food joints cooking normal stuff in weird ways for two years and then bought a giant Indian motorcycle (meaning built in India, not the iconic American machine) that they learned to rebuild enroute to Spain, where they encamped for another couple of years teaching English, wearing berets, and drinking lots of good wine while smoking those hideous Spanish cigarettes.
That was 30 years ago, and they are no less crazy and terrifying. But that’s where they learned to cook paella over open fires on the street in front of their apartment building. Seriously: You can look it up.
The word means “frying pan,” I’m told, and the dish came to Spain when the Moors invaded in the 700s and, considering all the work they did improving the country by importing things like Arabian horses, rice, spices, hygiene, science, architecture, and government, and the ghastly business following their expulsion — hello Inquisition — it seems a shame they ever left. The dish itself is a monument to the best parts of that lost civilization: a humble meal in a giant cooking vessel meant to feed family, guests, and strangers from the same enormous pan.
Hard to believe such a thing was ever possible, isn’t it? But paella is the ancestor of so many similar communal dishes wherever the Spanish Empire extended its reach, from arroz con granule in the Caribbean to jambalaya in Louisiana to bringhe in the Philippines.
The main thing is the rice. Here’s how to do it.
Equipment
Paella pan and spoon, properly known as a paellera and paleta. You will need them; they don’t have to be expensive, so just do it. A 15-inch pan supposedly serves six, but I’d call it a generous four, so plan accordingly. Then figure out what you’re going to cook it on. Paelleras are slightly convex, so they won’t sit flat on a stove. Open fire is preferred; a grill will work if there’s plenty of air for the flame with the pan on top. And if you just want to experiment, you can get away with using a cast-iron skillet, but it won’t be the same.
Ingredients
As with pan size, one must adjust ingredient amounts. This recipe will serve six people, more or less. Plan on one-third cup of uncooked rice per diner, and eyeball the rest. Contrary to popular belief, Valenciana paella does not contain seafood. It originated there as a simple farmer’s meal using easily accessible ingredients. So add duck and snails if you want.
Olive oil
One cut-up chicken, or just plenty of dark meat (or rabbit, if that’s your thing and you can find a fresh one). I do a dry brine for a day if I’ve got time, to help crisp the skin and add flavor.
Two or three good-sized tomatoes, grated
Two or three red peppers, julienned
Half pound or so of green beans
One pound of ground pork, or some kind of flavorful sausage that you like; more on this below.
Couple healthy pinches of saffron
Bottle of dry white wine, preferably Spanish Albariño.
Two cans of rinsed white beans, cannellini preferred. You can do the traditional fresh favas, but they take forever to properly cook.
Three or five rosemary sprigs
2 or 3 cups proper paella rice, like bomba or Calasparra, classic short grains grown and sold by Matiz. Again, like the paellera, you need this so don’t skimp.
1. Cover about half the paellera with olive oil, salt heavily, and heat gently.
2. Before oil starts to smoke, add chicken or rabbit, or both. Leave space between the meat so it doesn’t steam, and don’t mess with it. When it’s got a good crust, it will easily release and you can flip it over once, that’s it.
3. When the flip side is ready, move all the meat to the perimeter as best you can and pour the grated tomato into the empty center of the pan. You might be tempted to use canned tomato sauce: don’t. Give it a stir until it’s nice and hot, then add red peppers, green beans, and canned beans, and sauté until everything has broken down a bit and the liquid is nearly gone.
4. Add sausage. Some people will use hard chorizo, which I like but not here because of the texture, or Andouille, which is just a waste of flavor. I roll ground pork with milk-soaked bread or bread crumbs, egg, agridulce paprika (smoky-bittersweet), cinnamon, and pine nuts into meatballs called pelotas and use that, which (I’m told) is traditional. But do whatever you want.
5. Prepare saffron wine; that is, gently heat the white wine with the saffron and let steep for a while. When the sausage is browned, add the wine and then water to fill about two-thirds up the side of the pan. If you’re using a proper paellera, that will be to the level of the clavos — the rivets attaching the handles. Float a few rosemary strands on top. I use six.
6. Medium simmer until the liquid is almost gone, then give it a taste. It should be a bit salty; the rice will take care of that.
7. Now comes the rice. If the pan is crowded, you’re going to get something like a casserole. Nothing wrong with that. But if you’ve eyeballed it like a Spaniard, there’ll be a lot of empty space for the rice to fill. Whatever the case, sprinkle in a good handful (one-third of a cup or so) per person. So, for six people, say two cups. But do what looks right.
8. Two cups rice means six cups water or more. Paella rice can absorb a great deal of moisture (and flavor) and remain firm. There’s still plenty of moisture in the pan at this point, so you’re going to have to follow your gut. All the rice should be submerged. And don’t use packaged broth; you’re making broth right now.
9. Sit patiently while the paella simmers, anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes depending on the heat source and weather conditions. You can only hurt the paella now, so don’t mess with it, don’t cover it, don’t even look at it. Let the paellera do its job: the convex, dimpled surface both sears and steams the rice. When you hear a certain soft crackling, like popcorn popping, take it off the heat and let it rest.
10. Take your paleta and scrape up a portion from the bottom of the pan and flip it over. If you’ve done everything right, you should be looking at socarrat, a sweet, smoky, caramelized crust of rice. The word socarrat in Valencian means scorched and comes only to the most skilled or virtuous of paella-makers. May you become both.
Click here for a printable version of this month's KP Cooks recipe.
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