Paella in Place of a Roast

We eat our evening meal (and breakfast) at the table nearly every day - an on-the-knee supper is a treat - but Sunday lunch is still special in food terms. It offers the chance to round off the week that's gone, and get ready for the coming one. Often the heart of our meal is a roast, ideally rib of beef but economically frequently a good chicken. Yesterday, however, we had a paella that cost about £7.00.

The sofrito was a carrot, red pepper, onion, and two sticks of celery all chopped into tiny dice and fried in oil until the onion was turning translucent. A half pack of paella rice was added and stirred about for a minute, then the usual routine of add stock, cook, add stock, cook until the rice is done. It was homemade stock from a chicken carcass cooked up with veg, to which when heated for the paella I added a few strands of saffron. Meanwhile four boneless chicken thighs were cooked in the oven, and at the end a handful of frozen peas, a pack of defrosted king prawns and (heresy but it works) fish sticks cut in two. The secret is plenty of salt and pepper, a teaspoon of smoked paprika, plus half-a-tin of chopped tomatoes which give it colour and depth. Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, and tip them and their fat into the paella, and serve. 

I guess the other secret is having a proper pan: it is not needed to make the thing, a wide frying pan is fine, but the look of a wide two-handled paella pan makes it seem special. 

In my old career I travelled frequently to Barcelona, and several times was served paella in a customer's  directors' dining room. Always with Rioja (red). Conversation inevitably turned to how to cook the dish - the cook rather demotically used to eat with us - and it was clear that for the Spanish the paella is the equivalent of the British BBQ, i.e. a man thing. Walk round El Corte Ingles and you'll see gas-fired paella cookers for doing the dish outdoors. It was evident too that everybody has their own recipe: variations in the sofrito; use chorizo or ham; rabbit preferred over chicken; include clams (terrific if they are fresh, the shells look wonderful). As one of my contacts there said, even if it is eaten on a Sunday, paella is a Thursday meal - meaning you can pretty much add whatever you have at the end of the week, so long as the flavours don't clash.