José Pizarro’s special paella

Friday 31 January at 2:02pm

For our main course of the day José Pizarro’s here to celebrate everyone’s favourite Spanish dish - paella!

And to help wash it down, Tom’s back with a selection of Spanish wines to accompany the dish.

INGREDIENTS:

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

250g locally sourced monkfish, cubed

150g squid, ready cleaned and sliced

1 small onion, diced

1 garlic clove, sliced

2 ripe tomatoes chopped, or 200g tinned tomatoes

50ml white wine

1 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera dulce (mild smoked paprika)

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

500ml to 1 litre chicken or fish stock, warmed

pinch of saffron, about 15 threads, soaked in 2 tablespoons hot water

180g Calasparra rice

6 raw prawns, shell removed head and tail left on.

50g peas

75g mussels

75g clams

5 flat-leaf parsley sprigs, chopped

6 lemon slices

METHOD:

Heat the olive oil in a very large frying pan or, ideally, a paella pan that’s roughly 30cm in diameter. Fry the monkfish over a medium heat until browned – this will take about 3 minutes. Remove and put to one side somewhere warm, do the same with the squid, while you prepare the sofrito, or onion mixture, in the same pan.
Fry the onions and garlic for 5 minutes until soft, then add the tomatoes and the wine, and leave to reduce a little for a further 5 minutes, then stir in the pimentón. Season with salt and pepper.
Stir in the stock and saffron water, turn the heat up to high and bring the liquid to the boil. Pour in the rice, give another good stir and then add the monkfish, squid and stir once. Cook uncovered over a high heat for 10 minutes. Do not stir again – this is not a risotto.
Add the prawns, followed by the peas, and lastly the shellfish. Reduce the heat to medium, and cook for a further 8 minutes. Remember that the shellfish will release their own juices, so you probably won’t need to add extra stock towards the end, but if you think the rice is looking dry, add a ladle more.
Remove from the heat and cover with some kitchen paper or a tea towel, leave for 5 minutes to let the paella breathe. In Spain, people often use newspaper.
Scatter the parsley over the rice, arrange the lemon slices, then put the paella into the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves. You may find there is some crusty, slightly caramelised rice on the base of the pan; this is called the socarrat and is the sign of a well-cooked paella.

TOP TIP

Use a mixture of firm-fleshed white fish – select the freshest you can find; here I have used monkfish.