Paella is a spanish Saffron Rice based dish... it happens by basically cooking all the ingredients together. It's usually cooked in a special paella pan but this is NOT a problem. You can cook it in a heavy iron pan. When you cook the paella, what makes it special is that you caramelize a layer of the rice and this is called "Socarrat" and it feels so good!
Usually paellas are made with either sausage and chicken or seafood. Today I'm making a special version that you can impress your friends and family with only sausage paella with Pigeon Stock (Shorbet 7amam)... for the stock, I usually freeze them for later use!
Your ingredients should have:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp each hot smoked paprika, dried thyme and a pinch of saffron
300g paella or risotto rice or just normal white rice
2 tbsp tomato paste
900ml Pigeon stock
400g oriental sausages (Sogo2)
juice ½ lemon, other half cut into wedges
A handful of sweet peas
Instructions:
-Put olive oil in your pan, and sauté onions, garlic, smoked paprika, and thymes together till they start caramelizing to develop a flavor then sauté the sliced sausages till a crust is created.
-Meanwhile, bring your stock to a boil, take a 1/4 of the amount and dissolve the saffron then return it to the rest of the stock and boil.
-Add rice to the mixture and keep stirring for 2 minutes then start adding the boiling stock to it till it covers it. The key to the right consistency of the paella is not stirring the rice AT ALL then add the peas. Don't worry just keep the stock boiling for 5 minutes then keep it on medium heat for 15-20 minutes and cover it for the last 5 minutes, remove it from the heat then put on high heat for another 7 minutes till the bottom creates what we called the socarrat!
-Let it rest for 5 minutes and serve!
