Paella, the making of, has been on my mind since dear KH convinced me how easy it is to make, especially with a paella pan. So when I visited her last month, I got one from Chef’s Hat - the kitchen supplies store in Melbourne, and have been eager to try it.
The pan has been challenging though - after being scrubbed clean, it turned rusty immediately - turns out you need to wipe it with a kitchen towel in oil to keep it rust free. After finally getting the rust out, J coated it with oil and it remained pristine until I was ready to cook.
Scoured tons of “authentic” recipes and finally arrived at this one that didn’t require oven baking and didn’t sound too complicated. If paella is the staple food of the Spanish, wouldn’t it be like fried rice to the chinese or pasta to the italians? and if so, surely it can’t be toooo complex.
Well - the moment I put olive oil into the pan, the entire pan started seriously smoking up - and more alarmingly, the oil turned Black. Erm, wasn’t sure if I should continue to use it after this... I desperately tried to wipe off the blackened pan (apparently normal - though I’m sure blackened oil isn’t) with towels but it didn’t stop coming up black. J wisely said, let’s just use the regular non-stick pan - I reluctantly agreed - couldn’t work out why this pan didn’t work when KH had always been using this one for her paella. But not wanting to poison us on new year’s eve, I switched.
Now - the live prawns. It was my first time cooking with live prawns - tips from the internet and experienced cooking friends say that I should put the live prawns in the fridge for about half an hour, so that when I remove them, they’re slightly stunned and I should be able to wash them/shell them etc without much drama. However, once the prawns were doused with water while I was washing them, they started twitching - I tell myself to be Brave, and quickly finished washing them, and put a plate over the bowl they were in.
When it was time to put in the prawns and the clams on top of the rice and other ingredients, I put in the prawns first - and well, expectedly, they started to leap in startled fashion from the pan - luckily I was quick on my feet (hands rather) and slapped the lid on top. They banged (poor things I know....) a little more against the pan, as I quickly piled in the clams, and finally surrendered to their paella fate.
Followed ingredients and cooking instructions closely, and the recipe was pretty accurate, except for the part where it says 10-20 minutes to cook - it took me about 45 minutes.
The result was heavenly - perhaps even more so because it was the most complicated recipe I’d undertaken to date (me the seriously beginner non-cook). The rice was moist and nicely infused with the stock and spices, and the seafood was fresh (well, they -were- live). We gobbled everything up.
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