For the ninth straight year, October is Dining Month on OnMilwaukee, presented by the restaurants of Potawatomi Hotel & Casino. All month, we're stuffed with restaurant reviews, dining guides, delectable features, chef profiles and unique articles on everything food, as well as voting for your "Best of Dining 2015."
Vote for your favorite recipe Oct. 29-Nov. 5, 2015. The winner will receive a special grand prize package including a $3,000 gift card good towards any purchase of dining room furniture, as well as a meal for four – cooked in your home – by "MasterChef" contestant Katrina Kozar. All food for the dinner will be provided by Sendik's Food Market, your trusted, local grocer.
Mixed Paella
(serves 6-8 or 3 very hungry people)
Ingredients:
30 threads saffron, crushed (scant ½ teaspoon)
4 chicken thighs
10-12 large shrimp, peeled and deveined (optional)
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1⁄2 cup extra virgin olive oil
fresh chorizo, removed from casing and crumbled
1 T smoked paprika
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 medium tomatoes, minced or grated on the larges holes of a box grater (discard the skin)
1 small onion, minced
7 cups chicken broth
2 ½ cups short grain rice, preferably Valencia or Bomba
1 red pepper sliced into 1 inch strips
12 clams (optional)
Instructions:
Put saffron and 1⁄4 cup hot water in a small bowl; let sit for 15 minutes. Season chicken and shrimp with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a 16″–18″ paella pan over medium-high heat. Add chicken, shrimp, and chorizo and cook, turning occasionally, until browned, about 5 minutes. Transfer shrimp to a plate, leaving meats in pan. Add paprika, garlic, tomatoes, and onions to pan and cook, stirring often, until onions soften, about 6 minutes. Add reserved saffron mixture and broth, season with salt, and bring to a boil over high heat.
Sprinkle in rice, distribute evenly with a spoon, and add peppers. Cook, without stirring, until rice has absorbed most of the liquid, 12-15 minutes. (If your pan is larger than the burner, rotate it every two minutes so different parts are over the heat and the rice cooks evenly.) Reduce heat to low, add reserved shrimp, and nestle in clams hinge side down; cook, without stirring, until clams have opened and rice has absorbed the liquid and is al dente, 5-10 minutes more. Turn heat to high for 1-2 minutes to create the socarrat. Remove pan from heat, cover with aluminum foil, and let sit for 5 minutes before enjoying.
**Paella is totally customizable so feel free to make this dish vegetarian, all seafood, or all meats. Decorate the top of the dish before serving with any extra veggies. Be creative!!!**
Comments from Jill: Paella has bits of everything I love: rice, seafood, meat, and most importantly, crispy burnt parts. Not everyone is into that toasted rice flavor, but I think that is the best part. If you want the all important burnt bits, or socarrat, you’re going to need a paella pan.
Paella is a dish where the cooking vessel is crucial. The width of a paella pan helps with rice distribution, ensuring that the rice cooks in a thin layer. Paella pans are sized by width and not height. So a pan that feeds two is generally about 10-12 inches and a pan that serves eight is about 18 inches. The wider the pan, the more people it feeds. They even have paella pans that are 4 feet wide!
Just as important as the paella pan is the rice. Paella should be made with Calasparra or Bomba rice, medium grain rices grown in Spain. Spanish rice is chubby and round. It’s shape makes it ideal for absorbing large amounts of liquid while still staying somewhat firm. In traditional paellas, the rice kernels stay separate – in no way are they creamy or mushy. The rice really is the best part of a paella. I can eat loads and loads of that smoky, saffron flavored rice and I have.
