La Paella: Deliciously Authentic Rice Dishes from Spain's Mediterranean Coast
By Jeff Koehler
4.5/5
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About this ebook
The most famous dish of the hottest cuisine in town right now, paella is as flavorful as it is festive. Longtime Barcelona resident and Spanish food expert Jeff Koehler fills us in on this cherished rice dish, from its origins to just what it takes to make the perfect one (even without an authentic paella pan). Thirty recipes range from the original paella valenciana, studded with chicken and rabbit, to his mother-in-law’s Saturday shellfish special, to sumptuous vegetarian variations, to surprising soups and sweet takes. Stunning scenic photographs, shots of the finished dishes, plus a source list of unusual ingredients and special equipment round out this gorgeous homage to one of Spain’s national culinary treasures.
“Koehler does an excellent job of deconstructing paella, an often intimidating dish.” —Publishers Weekly
Jeff Koehler
Jeff Koehler is an American writer, photographer, traveler, and cook. His most recent book, Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World's Greatest Tea, won the 2016 IACP award for literary food writing and the Gourmand Award for Best in the World for a tea book. Other titles include Spain: Recipes and Traditions, named one of 2013's top cookbooks by the New York Times; Morocco: A Culinary Journey with Recipes; and La Paella. His work has appeared in Saveur, Food & Wine, NPR.org, NationalGeographic.com, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Afar, Fine Cooking, Tin House, and Best Food Writing 2010. After graduating from Gonzaga University, he spent four years in Africa and Asia before doing post-graduate work at King's College, London. Since 1996 he has lived in Barcelona. jeff-koehler.com @koehlercooks
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Book preview
La Paella - Jeff Koehler
Text and photographs copyright © 2006 by Jeff Koehler.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
isbn: 978-1-4521-5960-7 (epub)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
isbn: 978-0-8118-5251-7 (hc)
Designed and typeset by Benjamin Shaykin
Typeset in stf Walbaum, ptf Bryant, and ff DIN
Chronicle Books llc
85 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94105
www.chroniclebooks.com
a l’Eva
Contents
8 INTRODUCTION
15 BASICS
15 The Four Key Elements
15 ONE: THE PAN
15 La paella
18 La cazuela
18 El caldero
20 TWO: THE RICE
20 Spanish Varieties
22 Non-Spanish Options
22 Cooking Times
23 THREE: THE BASES
23 El sofrito
24 La picada
25 FOUR: THE LIQUID
26 Fish Stock
28 Chicken Stock
29 Vegetable Stock
30 Other Key Ingredients
30 OLIVE OIL
30 SALT
30 SAFFRON
30 PIMENTÓN
33 SNAILS
33 MUSHROOMS
34 RABBIT
34 SHRIMP AND PRAWNS
34 CUTTLEFISH AND SQUID
36 Techniques for Excellent Paellas
36 PAELLA’S FOUR GOLDEN RULES
36 HEAT SOURCES: STOVES, GRILLS, BURNERS, AND WOOD
36 FINISHING THE PAELLA IN THE OVEN
38 SOCARRAT
38 AL PUNTO
38 RESTING THE PAELLA BEFORE SERVING
38 SERVING
39 PREPARING AHEAD
39 INCREASING AND DECREASING QUANTITIES
41 Paellas
42 Paella valenciana
42 The Original Valencian Paella
46 Paella a la marinera
46 Fishermen’s Paella
48 Paella de marisco de Rosa
48 Rosa’s Shellfish Paella
51 Paella de pescado
51 Fish Paella
53 Paella de pescado azul
53 Bluefish Paella
56 Paella mixta
56 Mixed Poultry and Seafood Paella
58 Paella de conejo y alcachofas
58 Paella with Rabbit and Artichokes
62 Paella de costillas de cerdo y nabos
62 Paella with Pork Ribs and Turnips
65 Paella de masia
65 Farmhouse Paella with Rabbit, Chicken, and Pork Ribs
68 Paella de verduras
68 Garden Vegetable Paella
70 Paella de setas
70 Paella with Wild Mushrooms
75 Paella de primavera
75 Spring Paella
78 Arròs negre amb allioli
78 Black Rice with Allioli
81 Allioli
82 Arroz a banda
82 Rice with the Fish Served Separately
84 Arroz a banda con gambas y ajo
84 Rice with the Shrimp and Garlic Served Separately
89 Arrossejat d’escamarlans
89 Catalan Toasted Rice with Prawns
93 Rice Dishes from the Cazuela and Caldero
95 Arroz blanco con hierbas
95 White Rice with Herbs
96 Arroz de mar y montaña
96 Sea and Mountain
Rice with Chicken, Pork Ribs, Shrimp, and Calamari
98 Arroz de bacalao y verdures
98 Rice with Salt Cod and Vegetables
100 Arroz con sardinas
100 Rice with Sardines
103 Arroz de rape, gambas, y almejas
103 Rice with Monkfish, Shrimp, and Clams
106 Arroz de pollo
106 Rice with Chicken
108 Arroz de cazadores
108 Hunter’s Rice with Rabbit and Quail
111 Arroz de pichón y setas
111 Rice with Squab and Wild Mushrooms
115 Arroz caldoso de verdures y almejas
115 Soupy Rice with Vegetables and Clams
118 Arroz caldoso de pato y rebozuelos
118 Soupy Rice with Duck and Chanterelles
120 Arroz caldoso de bogavante
120 Soupy Rice with Lobster
124 Caldero de arroz de pescado de roca y tallarines de sepia
124 Caldron of Soupy Rice with Rockfish and Strips of Cuttlefish
129 Rice Desserts
130 Arroz con leche
130 Rice Pudding
133 Menjar blanc
133 Rice Flour and Almond Pudding
134 SOURCES
135 Where to Buy Paella Pans and Other Rice-Making Equipment in Spain
136 Where to Eat Authentic Paellas and Other Rice Dishes in Spain
138 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
139 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
141 INDEX
144 TABLE OF EQUIVALENTS
144 LIQUID/DRY MEASURES
144 LENGTH
144 OVEN TEMPERATURE
145 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Introduction
Paella is Spain’s most famous and cherished dish. It’s full of ritual and myth, tricks and techniques, and strict rules (Never stir the rice! Never cover while cooking!), yet open to interpretation and argument about what it can or can’t include. Paella is often at the center of family gatherings and village or even city fests, especially in Valencia and Catalunya, along Spain’s Mediterranean coast. There are other traditional ways of cooking rice in Spain, but paella is the most dramatic. You may prefer a moist rice dish of rabbit and quail in the cazuela (casserole) or a soupy rice cooked with lobster in a pot-bellied caldero, but nothing is as impressive as a large paella. Tip a thin, eighteen-inch-wide pan of rice the color of antique gold, studded with black mussels, toward a hungry table and there will be oohs and aahs. Among rice dishes, paella is king. It’s spectacular, memorable, and delicious—devastatingly so when done well.
I vividly remember my first paella. A decade ago I followed a Catalan woman named Eva home to Barcelona from graduate school in London. A few days after arriving, I found myself sitting around the table at her parents’ house for the weekly family paella. Her mother, Rosa, was born in Barcelona, though Rosa’s parents both came from a tiny village in the Valencian countryside. Rosa’s mother died when Rosa was very young, and Rosa spent part of her childhood among aunts (on both sides) in the village while her father worked in his small Barcelona grocery store. The aunts battled for the girl’s attention—and comforted her—with their paellas. For more than forty years now, Rosa has been making near-weekly paellas for her family. There is an open invitation—just call by Friday evening so that enough shellfish can be bought in the market Saturday morning. Cuantos mas seremos, mas reiremos, goes Spanish thinking. The more we will be, the more we will laugh.
And the more we will be, the bigger the paella!
On that memorable afternoon, Rosa carried her signature shellfish paella into the dining room, and when she tipped it toward us, I burst into applause, which drew more attention than the gorgeous, baroque rice. Plates were passed down and heaped with rice, jumbo shrimp and sweet prawns called cigalas, soft strips of cuttlefish, and tiny clams with grains of rice nestled inside. The thin layer of slightly caramelized rice known as socarrat was scraped from the pan and divided. It all tasted even more sublime than it looked. The nuttiness of the cuttlefish mingled with the sofrito (a slow-cooked aromatic tomato base), and the seafood was fragrant with sweet, smoky pimentón (paprika) and saffron. It was, quite simply, perfection. My affair with paella had begun. And so did my life in Spain: I stayed and married Eva not long afterward.
The Spanish word for rice, arroz, and the Catalan and Valencian arròs are derived from the Arabic ar-ruzz. The Arabs introduced rice into Spain in the eighth century, at the beginning of their long rule on the Iberian peninsula. They planted it around Valencia, including the marshy edges of the Albufera, the freshwater lake on the south side of the city, slightly inland from the sea (the name comes from the Arabic for lake,
al-buhaira). When Jaume I entered the city in 1238—halfway through the 700-year-long Christian reconquista of the country—he found rice fields abutting the city. Cultivation has continued there, focused around the Albufera. Today the rice fields along the silted-up edges of the lake are cut with eel-rich canals and produce the finest and most sought-after Spanish rice.
Vast irrigated orchards and verdant produce gardens, the huertas that Valencia is famous for, begin at the edges of the rice fields and radiate across the region. It was here in these huertas that paella was born. Rice was a basic staple and field workers prepared it with their garden vegetables—such as fresh beans, tomatoes, and artichokes—and the snails they found among the rosemary and thyme that grew wild. On lucky days, they added a freshly killed rabbit or duck, and on special occasions, they slaughtered a chicken. The rice dish, cooked in a wide, shallow pan over the embers of olive- or orange-tree branches, was called arroz a la valenciana. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was finally named paella valenciana, after the distinctive pan the rice was cooked in and the place from where it came.
Variations came later, drawn from available ingredients. There may be only one Valencian Paella (page 42), but there are countless other paellas, from the classic marisco (shellfish, page 48) and mixta (mixed shellfish and poultry, page 56), to combinations such as rabbit and artichokes (page 58) and pork ribs and turnips (page 62). Paella adapts well to a variety of seasonal ingredients, from fresh game in autumn to asparagus in spring. You can be creative. Why not add squid, sardines, rosemary, or wild mushrooms?
But what makes a paella authentic? I have heard an extreme few claim that a paella wasn’t a true paella unless it was made with lime-rich water from Valencia. Others say that anything other than paella valenciana is simply un arroz en una paella ("a rice in