Paella

[dwarfthrower]

Never done it before... flicked through a few recipes and they vary a whole lot so I think I'll pick and choose and roll my own.

I have no paella pan however, would a wok or a frying pan be the better substitute?

[AngryMidget]

A Wok would be the best substitute

[imp]

I'd have to say you're better off with a really wide pan. Depth doesn't matter as much as the size/circumference.

Paella dishes are very shallow and large in diameter b/c you use stock to cook the rice and it's all about evaporation and surface area.
If you use a pot that's too deep or a wok you'll end up with very unevenly cooked rice and it'll take forever to reduce the stock and have the rice soak it up.

My mum, before she had a proper paella dish, just used a VERY wide cast iron frying pan with a lid. She's from Spain so I figure she knows what she's doing when it comes to Paella.

[dwarfthrower]

Righteo... I think I have just the pan for the job then.

Cheers for that.

[imp]

Righteo... I think I have just the pan for the job then.

Cheers for that.
No Worries. :D Good Luck!

[kleph]

i've seen paella made a few times but haven't ventured there myself. the Cooks Illustrated (http://www.cooksillustrated.com/) folks I harp on constantly recently featured this dish in their magazine.

They urged using a paella pan 14 to 15 inches in diameter. Since the key to the dish is maintaining the evaporation of the liquids and to do that you need to keep the temperature of the food constant. Ergo it needs to be wide and able to maintain the heat equally.

They say a 14-inch ovensafe skillet will work as well (much as imp noted) but you need to increase the fluids significantly (up the chicken broth to 3 1/4 cups and the wine to 1/2 cup on the recipe i sent you) and before placing the pan in the oven, cover it tightly with foil.

Using anything smaller that that diameter is out because the contents will simply not fit. I would urge you to avoid a wok. The size is dandy but the curvature is completely wrong and it won't heat correctly for the dish.

[dwarfthrower]

OK, the paella experiment is over and the outcome was very good. I'm pretty much a "by feel" kind of cook so I didn't follow any particular recipe. I did read through about five or six yesterday and today to get a feel for what I was doing. I aimed to feed 4 (well two adults and two small children). But ended up with at least enough for six adults, so adjust quantities as you like.

What I used:
Half a litre of chicken stock
Half a bottle (375ml) of white wine - Sav Blanc
1 cup Italian Arborio rice
2 red onions, diced
1 green capsicum, diced
2 chicken thigh fillets, cut into 1 cm cubes
4 small pork medallions, cut into 1cm cubes
600g assorted seafood - calamari, prawns, mussels, fish
2 chorizo sausages, sliced into 1cm thick slices
4 cloves of garlic, finely diced
300g tin of diced roma tomatos
1tsp saffron threads
1 bouquet garni
Olive oil.

What I did with it:
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees (c)
Put the saffron and chicken stock into a saucepan and bring to the boil.
Drain off into a jug.
Put the seafood and wine into the saucepan and bring to boil very slowly. Switched off the heat as soon as it boiled. Just let that sit so the wine got a health dose of seafood flavour.

Got out my big ol cast iron frying pan and gave it a decent splash of olive oil.
Fry up the capsicum until well cooked - starting to blacken up a bit. Put aside in a bowl.
Splash more olive oil, brown the pork and chicken. Put aside in a bowl.
Sliced Chorizo sausages in the pan. Cook for a bit until the fat has cooked out of them. Put aside in a bowl.
Onions and garlic into the pan. Cook until onions are translucent and smelling sweet.

Put the rice in with the onions. Stir until well oiled and starting to pop about on the frypan surface. Then - while stirring contsantly - pour in the stock/saffron liquid a little at a time, wait until each little splash has evaporated/absorbed into the rice before adding more. By the time you use up the 500ml of stock the rice should be pretty much cooked and the mixture sticking together nicely.

Put the capsicum, meats, sausages, tomatos and seafood into the pan and cook together for a bit.

Transfer to a big earthenware dish, drop in the bouquet garni and cook, stirring intermittently for around an hour or until the rest of the liquid has pretty much evaporated or been absorbed. Remove bouquet garni and serve.

What I'll do differently next time:
Back off on the onions. One should be plenty.
Fry the rice around a bit more, see if I can't get a nuttier flavour out of it.
Maybe swap out the chicken thighs for another sausage or two.
See how it pans out with a red wine instead of white.

The Verdict
Mrs Dwarf was very pleased with the outcome and the dwarflings cleaned their plates. I could have gone for a bit more "oomph", but then I tend to like my food big on heavy earthy flavours. I might try frying up the prawn shells then boiling them in the chicken stock to make a seafood/chicken blended stock. But overall well worth the effort (especially since I managed to kill two nights worth of cooking in one hit).

[kleph]

another paella method it to take spagetti and break it into inch-long pieces and then cook it just like the rice.