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New book, new year, new paella recipe


Arroz En Paella De Barcelona, Los Jueves (Barcelona-style Thursday Paella Rice)


I wanted to try out one of my new cookery books, I also had two new paella pans from Lisa so it was a bit of a no-brainer that it was going to be 'Paella' from Steve and Neet that got 2012's first run-out. The book has a remarkable 118 different paella recipes.
This is a bit of a bastardisation of the above recipe made to accommodate Martha's dislike of fish and the fact that this was a lazy saturday night in.
However the thing I was most interested in was the use of hob and oven to finish the dish off.
All in all I think it was successful.

Serves four

Ingredients

1litre fish or veg stock
100ml olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
400g chicken, deboned and cut into 30g pieces
8 king prawns (jumbo shrimps), heads removed and tails shelled
150ml passata
6 small chorizo, cut in half
200g green beans, trimmed and cut into 3cm lengths
1 green pepper, seeded, skinned and sliced into thin strips
400g bomba or other short-grain rice
1tsp Spanish sweet smoked paprika
⅕tsp saffron threads, soaked in warm water
1 lime
salt


Method

Heat the stock but do not allow it to boil. Preheat the oven to 150°C.

Heat the oil in the pan over low heat, add the garlic and saute until lightly browned.
Add the chorizo then the chicken pieces and saute for a few minutes until brown all over, then remove from the pan. Add the king prawns and saute for a few minutes until lightly browned. Remove them from the pan and set aside. Add the green beans and green pepper strips to the pan and saute for a few minutes until the vegetables have softened.
Reduce the heat to low, add the rice and cook for a few minutes, stirring with a wooden spatula, until thoroughly coated and translucent; do not allow the rice to burn. Add the passata and stir the ingredients well, deglazing the pan by scraping up any bits on the bottom of the pan with a wooden spatula.

Add the smoked paprika, stir through and cook over moderate heat for a few seconds, taking care that it does not burn. Pour in the hot stock, stir until combined and spread out the ingredients evenly in the pan. Add the saffron and grate the zest of the lime over the paella, and bring to the boil. If you have a timer, set it to 17 minutes. Cook over high heat for 5 minutes until the rice rises to the surface of the liquid. Taste and season with salt if necessary, bearing in mind that the flavours will become more pronounced as the liquid evaporates. Put the paella in the preheated oven for 7 minutes.


Remove the paella from the oven and arrange the king prawns, monkfish, quid, langoustines and mussels on the top of the price, put the pan back in the oven for a further 5 minutes, then remove the paella once again. Cover the paella with a clean, damp dish towel (or leave in the oven once turned off), allow it to rest for 3 minutes, then serve.

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