PAELLA

If we are having Paella for dinner, does that mean that we are celebrating? Yes it is true that we have Paella once in a blue moon because it is not easy to make and requires a lot of ingredients. I have to correct myself on this. It is easy to make if you do it in two steps. Cook the meat and freeze it until you are ready to eat. Adding the rice to the mix means, you will have dinner in only30-40 minutes. Otherwise, from start to finish, this dish will take at least 2 hours to make.

I also have another secret to make this dish exceptional. Recently, I saw in one of the cooking shows that adding "sofrito" will make the yellow rice tastier than ever. I have provided the link to the recipe from Daisy Martinez at Daisy Cooks .

From now on, it is not necessary that we can only have Paella for special occasions. We can have anytime we feel we like it.

here's the recipe:
1 lb chicken, cut into pieces
1 lb pork, preferable cut up ribs

1 or 2 pcs of chorizo de bilbao, or chinese sausage or keilbasa
1 lb shrimp, unpeeled if available

1 box New Zealand mussels or or 1 bag of Manila clams
2-3 big tomatoes, cut into small pieces
1 big onion, minced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red/green pepper, cut into strips ( divide into 2)
2-3 pieces of bay leaf
achuete (food color) or Goya Sazon powder
olive oil
patis
regular cooking rice and sweet rice (malagkit)- proportion 2 to 1
½ cup frozen green peas
½ cup raisins

Heat 3 tbsp cooking oil in a big cooking pot. Fry the chorizo pieces until brown, Remove when done. Set aside. In the same pan, fry crushed garlic until brown, then add tomatoes. Cook for a minute or so until soft, then add minced onions. Add the chicken and pork pieces and sauté for few minutes. Add patis to the mixture and let the meat absorb the patis by covering the pan. Lower the temp to medium high. Stir around the meat until all pieces are all brown on all sides. Add 2 cups water (or enough water to cover the meats halfway). Add the fried chorizo, ½ of the cut up red pepper, bay leaf and achuete. Wait for mixture to boil, then lower temperature to low. Cover the pot and check after few minutes to see if meat is tender enough (half cooked only) When cool, remove the meat from the cooking liquid and set aside to be used in cooking the rice/sweet rice mix.

Cook the mussels in a small amount of water until it opens (less than a minute) and set aside the cooking liquid. Cook the shrimp separately also if using big size shrimps, otherwise, small ones can be added on the rice mixture.

Combine 2 cups and 1 cup malagkit (amout of rice can be doubled at 2 – 1 proportion) with the cooking liquid from the meat. Add any cooking liquid from the mussels if not enough. Same proportion of water and rice should be used as when you’re cooking regular rice. You can use a large non-stick frying pan or in rice cooker ( use less water and watch and wait until rice cooks). Cook at high temp. and when water is almost absorbed, lower heat and add the chichen, pork and shrimps (if using small ones), green peas, raisins and the rest of the sliced red pepper and mix. Add salt (patis) and pepper according to taste. Add a little bit more liquid and small amount of oil at the bottom (to avoid the rice sticking at the bottom of the pan) of frying pan. Cover and wait until the rice is thoroughly cooked. Keep checking so that nothing sticks at the bottom of the pan if cooking in frying pan. At this point, should you see the tutong, as you flip the rice over, simply remove and set aside, so it would not mix with rest.

When cooking in rice cooker, remove the partially rice as soon at timer gets off and transfer to frying pan with small amount of oil and add ingredients mentioned above and cook the mixture in low temp until the rice is thoroughly cooked. When I started cooking paella, I used the rice cooker, to make sure the rice will be cooked. Adding water to partially cooked rice will not result to the perfect texture that you want to achieve. Eventually, after few trial and error, I can now cook the rice just from the liquid from cooking the meat and the mussels.

For those who have tried my recipe, let me know, if you have problems or questions. It is not easy to put into words when your hands do the cooking. I tried to remember each and every step, but I might have missed some explanations along the way.