‘Paella’ said Padma Lakshmi on television, with a pout and her curious accent. I watched in fascination as she gracefully stirred a bubbling pot of many delicious-looking things in a beautiful, cobbled courtyard somewhere in Spain. It looked like a crackling meal-in-a-pot for a jolly, big gathering.
Paella comes up in a conversation again when I meet Carmen Lopez del Hierro, a food blogger from Spain, who manages her own gastro blog, Tía Alia Recetas.
When I ask her if she will give me the recipe for a vegetarian paella, she responds with a short “No”.
The original
“There is no vegetable paella because the Paella Valenciana (believed to be the original recipe for paella) has chicken and rabbit. But there is ‘vegetable rice’ or ‘vegetarian rice’. Very popular and delicious,” she adds, I suspect, to mollify me.
“In a classic paella, there are 10 ingredients, to be precise,” says Hierro. These are olive oil, chicken, rabbit, ferraura and garrofó beans, tomato, water, salt, saffron and rice. I point out that I watched Padma Lakshmi put prawns into the paella she cooked. “Anything different from the original recipe should be called ‘rice with seafood’ or ‘rice with vegetables’ and not seafood paella or vegetable paella. The word paella is widely misused,” Hierro says.
The name comes from the dish the rice is cooked in — the pan is the paella. “And ideally, it should be cooked on wood fire.”
For the masses
Nosing around on the Internet reveals that the paella goes back centuries. It probably evolved from a mishmash of leftovers from royal banquets that the domestic help feasted on.
Labourers bunged in snails, and whatever vegetables they could get their hands on, into the pot with rice, cooked it over an open fire and let everything stew in their own juices.
For many, paella is a favourite Sunday food. Several restaurants set a day of the week to serve it. “But there is no reason at all not to cook and eat it every day if you want,” says Hierro as she reels off the recipe and I scramble to jot it down on a paper napkin. I also persuade her to give me a vegetarian alternative but promise not to call it ‘paella’. Now, how do you say ‘mission accomplished’ in Spanish?
- Pinch of saffron (0.5 gm)
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 chicken, cut in medium-large pieces (bone and skin on)
- 1/2 rabbit, cut in large pieces (bone and skin on)
- 50 gms runner beans, cut in 2-cm pieces (ferraúra in Spanish)
- 50 gms broad beans (garrofó in Spanish)
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 tomato, grated
- 1.5 ltr chicken stock
- 250 gms paella rice (short grain or similar)
- Rosemary (optional)
- Heat up a paella pan of 30-32 cm in diameter.
- Wrap the saffron in foil and toast it for 10 seconds on each side on the paella pan. Sprinkle generous amounts of salt on the pan and pour the olive oil. You need to hear the salt crackle.
- Fry the chicken and the rabbit in this, turning them so they brown on all sides. The high heat gives the meat a nice brown caramelised colour and flavour. At this point, add the runner beans and broad beans and mix them well. Ensure you do not over-stir, as this will release the juices, and the ingredients will start poaching and boiling (which should be avoided).
- Bring the heat down, add chopped garlic, stir and leave for 30 seconds to one minute. Now, add the smoked paprika, stir, and then the grated tomato. Bring the heat back up, stir and let the tomato cook for two minutes before adding the chicken stock to the pan. Crush the toasted saffron and spread it all over the pan. Now, add the rice. When the stock begins to bubble, allow it to cook on high heat for 10 minutes. Then lower the heat and cook for another eight minutes.
- Do not stir the paella after the rice is added, or it can get stodgy. When the rice is ready, add two or three rosemary sprigs, cover the pan with foil and rest it for five minutes, before tucking in.
