Veneto Taste, Wine & Life

Ingredients

• 400 g fresh shrimps
• 1/2 kg squids
• 1/2 kg mussels
• 1/2 kg bonnet rice
• 1 onion
• tomato paste
• 1/2 green pepper
• 1 clove of garlic
• olive oil
• saffron
• salt

Procedure

It’s a national Spanish dish from Valencia, with standard ingredients: rice, saffron and virgin olive oil. Its name comes from the pan in which it is cooked, “paellera” (a flat, shallow, wide frying-pan with thick walls and two handles on the sides, instead of one). In this frying-pan (or a similar one) put olive oil, till it covers the bottom of the frying-pan, and brown garlic and onions chopped finely. When they are ready, add pepper cut in thin ringlets and a tbsp tomato paste. Then add the squids, the rice, some saffron which you had diluted with hot water, salt and leave it for a few minutes. The rice won’t burn if you pour in the frying-pan some hot water.

When the dish “soaks” its juice, add mussels and shrimps, some more salt, about half glass hot water and leave it for 10 more minutes.

We’ve got you some piece of advice: f.e. don’t remove the shrimps’ heads ’cause they’ll lose their taste! If the rice is too washy, take off the lid. If it’s dry, add some water. Finally, if you want to grow an appetite for paella, open the book of Barcelonan writer Manuel Vasquez Montalba “The recipes of Pepe Carvalio” and read the a-la Valencia variant from the hero, the cunning detective. Very special!

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