On March 27th, celebrate Spanish Paella Day! Paella is a rice dish originating from the Valencia region in Spain, in the mid-19th century . It was the preferred lunch of laborers who would cook their rice in a large pan over fire, adding in whatever was on hand. Paella is the Valencian word for pan. On a side note, I looked up the Spanish word for pan and it’s sartén.
If you hadn’t guessed yet, I decided to celebrate today by making Paella! I went online and found this recipe from Allrecipes, advertised as “Easy” Paella. I’m not a great cook, so I often seek out the easiest recipe I can find. Upon reading the recipe, it seems like something I could do. There’s one glaring issue though…
I don’t know about all of you right now, but where I live, we’re being told to practice social distancing. In the midst of this corona virus pandemic, I’ve been laid off from my job, businesses are closing, and grocery stores have reduced hours. This means I do not have all the ingredients to make a Paella. But I won’t let this stop me! I’m going to celebrate Spanish Paella Day no matter what!
What do I not have for this recipe? Chicken is out, saffron, white rice, chorizo, shrimp, bell pepper and fresh parsley too. Err… it seems like I don’t have the bulk of the ingredients. Luckily, I think I have some pretty good substitutions. No chicken, chorizo, or shrimp in sight, unfortunately. Instead of white rice, I’ll use brown rice and hope it cooks similarly. I have mini sweet bell peppers, and dried parsley instead of fresh. I took to google and found that apparently you can substitute saffron with tumeric, though the taste isn’t the same. I really hope this works!
Here’s a picture of all the ingredients laid out, minus the chicken broth:
I like laying out my ingredients and any special equipment I’ll need, and pre-portion the amounts when I can, so I can easily grab anything when the cooking inevitably moves too fast for me, and I’m left running back and forth from the recipe to the stove like a headless chicken.
Just prepping to make the paella was such an ordeal. Five minutes into cutting the peppers, I sliced my finger and spent twenty more minutes trying to stop the bleeding. It took another thirty minutes to zest the lemon with a pairing knife. Making lemon zest was maybe the most grueling part of this ordeal.
When I finally got to cooking, everything went so fast. I realized coming up on step 3 that some of the herbs were meant to marinate the chicken, so I just threw them in with the onions. I also added baby spinach to buff up the topping a bit. I should’ve added more peppers and onion to make up for the lack of meats, but I didn’t think of it. All in all though, I believe it came out alright.
I’ve never had spanish paella, so I have nothing to measure mine against. However, the rice part tasted a bitter to me, that might’ve been the tumeric substitution. The topping was delicious, but obviously there wasn’t nearly enough! I’ll definitely be using that paprika, black pepper and oregano combination to cook vegetables in the future.
Happy Spanish Paella Day everyone!