Anita’s Paella

Name: Anita’s Paella
Ingredients: 4 langoustines (Nephrops norvegicus, large prawns with claws); 1 coffee cup of hard-grain rice per person and 3 times its volume of water; ½ kilo (1 lb 2 oz) of fresh mussels, scrubbed, washed, bearded; 1 handful of new peas or haricots verts, topped, tailed, broken in two; 2 or 3 onions, hashed; 2 small cuttlefish cleaned and sliced into rounds; 6 or 7 soupspoons of olive oil; ½ kilo (1 lb 2 oz) tomatoes; 7 or 8 saffron threads, immersed for a few minutes in warm water; the rib bones separated from 3 or 4 pork chops and chopped in two; half a chicken, neatly severed into small pieces

Preparation info

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Honey from a Weed

By Patience Gray

Published 1986

About

This requires a two-handled iron paella, far more capacious than a frying pan, to make it in – a large area of evaporation being vital to the perfect cooking of the rice. You need:

Ingredients

half a chicken, neatly severed into small pieces
the rib bones separated from 3 or 4 pork chops and chopped in two
2

Main course

Method

Brown the pieces of chicken in olive oil in the paella, on a hot flame, turning them about, (reserving two soupspoons of olive oil for later). Remove them from the pan, and brown the pork ribs in the same oil. Remove these and fry the sliced cuttlefish. Remove them and fry the langoustines and put them aside.

Prepare the sofregit by brown