Paella with Chicken & Seafood

One of my favorite Spanish food is Paella, a favourful, one pan rice dish. You can use chicken or seafood or simply vegetables. The Spanish flavours come from sweet pepper, pimiento powder (smoked paprika powder), saffron and chorizo (Spanish smoked sausage).

If you can't find the Spanish ingredients, don't let that stop you. Replace the ingredients with some mixed herbs, regular paprika, bay leaves and it'll become a beautiful one pan rice, minus the Spanish flavours.

By the way, the authentic way is to cook the rice in a paella dish with dimples at the base of the pan. Sadly, I burned mine a while ago and I didn't want to buy more utensils. I have been using a regular pan and it's doing just fine.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of par-boiled rice (for authentic taste, use bomba rice)

• 21/4 cup of chicken stock

• 1 sweet pepper, yellow or red

• 1 medium onion, diced

• 2 shallots, diced

• 4 cloves of garlic, diced

• 1/2 cup Chorizo, diced

• 1 medium tomato, diced

• 2 tsp pimiento

• A few threads of saffron

• 2 tbsp of frozen peas (optional)

• Some lemon (optional)

For meat, you can use chicken, shrimp, scallop, fish or mussel. Use whatever you can find in the market. The key is to brown the meat on both sides first and add to the rice in the last 5 minutes.

For fresh seafood, marinate with salt and pepper. For frozen shrimp, scallop, fish, use the following marinate. Coating seafood in cornstarch will keep them golden brown and moist.

• 1 tsp of soya sauce

• Minced ginger

• Minced garlic

• 1 tsp of cooking wine

• 1 tsp of sugar

• 1 tsp of cornstarch

For chicken breast or thigh, cut into big pieces and use the following marinate.

• 1 tsp of soya sauce

• 1 tsp of sugar

• 1/2 tsp of salt

• Minced garlic

• 1 tsp of cooking wine

• 1 tsp of cornstarch

Method

1. Heat oil in pan and brown chicken and seafood on both sides. There's no need to cook through. Remove meat and set aside

2. Add Chorizo and cook until slightly brown.

3. Add onion, shallot and garlic pan fry until soften

4. Add sweet pepper, tomato and rice.

5. Add chicken stock, pimento and saffron. Make sure the rice grains are fully immersed in the liquid.

6. Bring to a boil and then reduce to medium heat; just small bubbles in the rice. Cook for ~20 mins. Take care not to burn the rice. Check at 15 mins, if the rice is not ready and there's no liquid, add some water.

7. When the rice is almost ready, add the chicken and seafood on top of the rice.

8. Add some frozen peas, black pepper or salt if needed. Cook for another 5 minutes.

9. Turn off the heat and let it covered for another 5 mins.

10. Squeeze lemon juice on paella to give some freshness.