On A Plate: Spain

It’s Spain this week, and no food speaks more of that fine nation than paella. Except perhaps patatas fritas. Anyway, here is my authentic recipe for paella, gleaned from a tiny piece of card attached to a fridge magnet my parents brought back from Benalmadena some years ago, and you can’t get much more authentic than that I reckon. I have transcribed this recipe word-for-word from that precious text, so if you similarly follow its instructions word-for-word you surely can’t go far wrong.

Ingredients:

  • 600grs. rice
  • 200grs. loin
  • 200grs. eel
  • 200grs. sausage
  • 200grs. peas
  • 100grs. green beans
  • 10grs. paprika
  • 12 shellfishes
  • 1/8l. Oli litre
  • 1 Tomato chicken
  • 2 peppers
  • 4 ripe tomatoes
  • 1 onion
  • 3 garlics, saffron, salt and parsley

Method:

  1. Finely chop the onions and brown in rit healed in «Paella» cortingdish
  2. Add the tomatoes, prawns, feons and carjennt pepper
  3. Corb for appros 10 minutes
  4. Add the fish, rausage and chicken, miaing all together
  5. Put in the rice and pour bating water (about doulle volume tree)
  6. Leoson sal gratic partey
  7. Limofort 20 minutes all liquid up
  8. Decorte sitig of paper sever medi in the «Paella» coting dish

I publish this in the certain knowledge that were I to translate my instructions for, say, sausage, mash, peas and onion gravy into Spanish, the result would be similar. Still, with a scoop of good luck, your finished paella should look something like this.