What's Cooking With Dive? Seafood Paella

Aren'tcha just sick of Old Dive's risotto recipes?
I know, I know; I make risotto of some description at least once a week and I've already posted seafood risotto and my wild mushroom and chestnut mutant autumn risotto monster, so for a nice change, today we're going to abandon the arborio and hit the basmati.

It's paella time!
Yay!

Hokay, so it's almost exactly the same recipe as risotto but what the hell; it makes a completely different dish.
Plus: if you liked the fact that my risotto was simple, you should try this; it's as dumb as fuck. You don't even have to take your brain into the kitchen with you; you can leave it on the sofa watching the smegging telly.
You'll want a good knife, a chopping board, a heavy, flat-bottomed frying pan, something to stir with and some ingredients.

So … Put away the arborio and carnaroli rice, the sushi rice and the jasmine rice; we'll have none of that short-grain nonsense; let's get some serious length in those grains; today we're going to open that big ol' jar of organic basmati.
I usually use this in all my Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi dishes but today we're heading over to Spain, to a nice little kitchen beside the fish dock of a small harbour.

I popped in to see David the Fishmonger this morning and picked up some of his gorgeous triple-A grade sashimi quality tuna, which I'll be demolishing tomorrow with donburi and miso soup.
While I was in there I grabbed a whole load of miscellaneous fish and shellfish to make some yummy fish stock and we'll be making today's paella with a pint of that fish stock (three more pints in the freezer … yum), a big ol' handful of the leftover fish and some nice prawns.

You know me and olive oil … Well, Olive Oyl, too, but that's another story and don't tell Popeye.
Just because there's a recession doesn't mean you have to buy cheap olive oil. For fuck's sake you can always sell a kidney or a child if things get tight, but good olive oil is important!
This is my favourite; that single quinta (quinta means farmhouse but is actually a named estate like with French vineyards) vintage Portuguese stuff they tread in old stone lagares; a bunch of happy, singing Portuguese farmers stomping those gorgeous, late harvest olives that are so much more intense than even the best Greek ones. I use Greek olive oil in salads but this stuff is unbeatable in rice and pasta dishes where the taste it imparts to the onions and garlic is all important.
The only place you can get this stuff outside of Portugal is the little deli in Pimlico called Delicias de Portugal. Go there. Spend money.

So … Just about everything I cook starts off as a good, strong, local organic onion and some yummy French garlic quivering in terror on the chopping board as I creep up on it with my wonderful Japanese ceramic knife in my hand and vegecide in my heart.
Be merciless. You want a semi-rough chop for this dish and a high heat to get the oil smoking, then it's in with the onions and stir fry them for a few seconds. Whack the heat right down and toss in the garlic then stir it around and sweat 'em down for a few minutes until they are transparent and have achieved that magical one-ness with the olive oil.

Next up: sprinkle the rice over that lot and gently fold it in until every grain is coated with the oil/onion/garlic mélange.

If you've got company coming round you can soak some saffron for this bit but as it's just me pigging out I tossed in a good teaspoon of freshly ground turmeric. Stir it around until everything's nice and yellow. Then rip up some fresh basil so you can do that gorgeous finger-sniffing bit afterwards.

You remember I made that fish stock earlier? Well now's the time to turn up the flame and add that. If it's cool, add it little by little to prevent it chilling the rice; mine was still really hot from making the stock so it all went in at once.
For paella you need to add the whole lot, unlike risotto where you need the rice to absorb it slowly.
Once the stock's in there and everything's stirred around nicely, turn it down to a slow simmer and you can go and fiddle with yourself or a partner for around ten minutes.

After that, there's only about five minutes left to go so give it all a good stir and shake the pan down again. Sometimes I'll add olives here but today it's petits pois to give it a nice splash of colour.

Before you start the dish, just flash-fry the whitefish. Only for a few seconds to give it a tiny bit of colour, then put it on a plate to wait for this part.
Two minutes to go and stir in all the fish and the prawns.
And that's all there is to it.
Honestly. It's that bloody simple. I mean if you lived in a little fishing town on the Spanish coast you'd want to spend as little time cooking as possible to free up time to sit and look out over the sea and get shitfaced on local wine, wouldn't you?

Dish it up.
Go "Oooh" at how pretty the yellow rice looks.
Eat it all up.
I find a glass or three of nicely chilled, really good Alsace Gewurtztraminer turns this from a delicious dish into a sexual experience.

Enjoy!