I took a stab at cooking paella this evening after suffering another bout of serious paella cravings. I was able to find a place in Scarborough that served paella, but it tasted more like rice with oil and tomato sauce than actual paella. But I degress.
I'm told that the secret to paella is in sofrito. Made with a lot of onions, garlic, and tomatoes, it is sauted over low heat for about 2 hours.
4 medium onions with 1/2 cup of olive oil after 30 mins
Sauted onions for about 1 hour, then added 4 cloves garlic
Added 5 plum tomatoes and 1 can tomato sauce (I ran out of tomatoes) and cooked for another hour
For my meat, I used chicken, tofu marinated in teriyaki sauce, salmon (a last minute add) and shrimp. I cooked the chicken and tofu first, adding chicken broth and more olive oil as I didn't have oil and juice from chorizo and pork. Instead of arborio rice, I used brown rice. Bad idea. It took an extra hour to cook.Long story short, it did work out with all the tweaking I had to make (place too much chicken broth as it looked more like soup, took out some of the liquid only to add it in when the rice wouldn't cook...) and yes, 4 hours of slaving over the stove was well worth it. Topped it off with diced bell peppers and sweet peas (which countered the saltiness - didn't account for the teriyaki marinated tofu being too salty and added more salt).
I'll probably add in more seafood (I saw a bag of mixed seafood at that Asian grocery on Washington st), use more plum tomatoes and onions for the sofrito, and be more patient when cooking the rice.
As is the case with everything I make, 75% of the dish better be veggies.
Burnt rice aka socorrat. Yes, good paella means burnt rice at the bottom of your pan.
