NormanKliman -> RE: spanish thangs ! (Dec. 1 2009 0:11:26)
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Lots of paella recipes out there, most are not traditional (vs. Valencia). You can use a single large and deep frying pan. Remove skin from chicken and chop into pieces. If chopping through bone, remove any splinters or fragments. Best way to avoid the problem is to use boneless fillets (thigh better than breast). Brown the chicken in a bit of oil (this is important so get it good and brown in a small amount of oil) and set aside for now. In the same pan sauté chopped onion, along with chopped green pepper and a dash of paprika if you like. Add to the pan the water or broth that you're going to use to cook the rice. A ratio of three parts liquid to one part rice has worked best in the places where I've lived, although I see other proportions indicated in recipes and cooking instructions. Scrape the bottom of the pan with a fork or something to get the brown bits into the liquid. Add the rice (should sit on the bottom and not on top of the ingredients) and then the other ingredients: the browned chicken, pieces of squid or cuttlefish (the latter requires more cooking time so sauté it along with the onion), peas or green beans if you like, real saffron (99% of Spanish cooks use food coloring), garlic (makes a world of difference, and you can add it to the boiling water to avoid burning it in the oil), and some kind of bivalve (get the sand out of clams, clean the mussel shells, etc.) In the last 5-10 minutes, add peeled shrimp, making sure they end up cooked (just past the change from pink to white) and not overcooked. Three important things: short-grain rice, proportion of liquid to rice (should be a tiny bit left that will be absorbed by the rice after turning off heat) and properly cooking all the ingredients (some will have to be sautéed with the onion). There’s a bar in Madrid, near the Rastro, that includes freshly ground black pepper in their paella.
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