Paella Con Cock
Here is a recipe I learned from the Señora I lived with in Spain. There are several differences to my recipe, but the results are still better than most of what you get outside of Valencia, Spain – the home of paella. This is one of 50 recipes in the book, 50 Ways to Eat Cock®: Healthy Chicken Recipes with Balls!
Ingredients
- 3 cups short grain brown rice, soaked for 2 hours in 6 cups water with 1 Tbs raw cider vinegar
- 3 Tbs olive oil, extra virgin
- 1 small onion,
- 1 small tomato, finely chopped
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 1 chorizo sausage, cut into 1?2” slices
- 1 cock cut into 8 pieces or meat left over from making stock
- water or stock
- 1 large pinch saffron, rubbed
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- sea salt to taste
- 1 cup raw shrimp, shelled and deveined
- 1 roasted red pepper, sliced into strips lengthwise
- 1?2 cup frozen peas
- 2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced lengthwise into quarters
- 1 lemon cut into wedges
Instructions
- In a large sauté pan or paellera, heat olive oil over medium. Add onion, tomato, and garlic. Cook gently so they wilt, but do not brown.
- Brown chorizo in the pan, then remove to platter. If using raw cock meat, sprinkle with salt and add it to the pan. Brown the meat on all sides. Remove to small stockpot and pour in water or stock. Simmer until meat is nearly tender, about 40 minutes.
- Add drained rice to oil in sauté pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly to coat with oil. Add a few more tablespoons of olive oil if necessary.
- In about 5 minutes when rice begins to smell fragrant, pour in all the stock from the stockpot. Bring to a boil, continuing to stir rice occasionally.
- Add saffron, paprika, and salt (if necessary). Nestle meat neatly amongst the rice. Simmer.
- When liquid has reduced until it barely covers the rice, place sausage, shrimp, roasted peppers and peas into pan. If using meat reserved from making stock, add it now.
- Use the back of a flat spoon to gently incorporate these ingredients into rice. Allow top of rice to dry, then cover.
- If you do not have a cover large enough to cover the pan, then cover with a layer of paper towels followed by several sheets of newspaper.
- Rice is done when no water remains, but note that the end result will have a light gravy.
- Decorate with eggs and lemon neatly arranged on top. Serve hot.
Notes
The first difference is that I make mine with brown rice instead of the white paella rice called Bomba. Another difference is that it is usually made with a young chicken, instead of a cock or stewing hen that requires long cooking.
My final violation of this dish is covering the paella to thoroughly cook the rice, but I assure you, when using brown rice this is necessary and will not make the final result unpleasant. Other than that, there is no set recipe for the variety of meat that paella can contain. So use your imagination with ingredients such as mussels, clams, codfish, rabbit, and ham.