Making paella

By Marilu Micallef

Marilu Micallef describes how to make authentic Spanish paella.

Marilu Micallef was born and brought up in the northern Spanish region of Galicia, on the Atlantic, far away from the Mediterranean home of paella, which is on the other side of Spain in Valencia. There, there are great rice-paddies and much of the cuisine is built around rice – and fish from the nearby sea. Marilu grew up not near the sea but in the mountains, an area where there is plenty of snow in the winter.

But you don’t have to be from Valencia to cook paella. Marilu explains that everybody in Spain cooks it; the regional dish has become a national dish, associated internationally with the country as a whole. “Every Spanish household will have its own recipe for paella,” Marilu says. “There are as many recipes as there are families, but the basic method stays more or less the same. My sister and I have very different recipes, for example. Some people make it with chicken, others prefer fish and prawns, and then there is the classic rabbit.”

In Galicia, she says, seafood paella is more popular. In Valencia, it is chicken and rabbit. The chicken is put into the mix bones and all, but for her recipe here, Marilu uses chicken breast, which is less trying for those unaccustomed to the dish.

So how did Marilu come to live in Malta? The Spanish woman met a Maltese man at a German language school in Switzerland. Now this has been her home for 10 years. She says that Malta’s joining the European Union has made a big difference in terms of the ingredients, including pimento, that she now finds on the market to prepare her Spanish dishes. “I’ve noticed a great change,” she says, “and it’s made cooking easier and more interesting.”

You can’t make this dish without a special paella pan. You can buy one at a good catering shop or household goods store.

For 6 people, you will need:

500g of chicken breast (cubed), 500g of rice, 500g of squid (cleaned and sliced), 500g of shrimp (peeled, but tail on), 10 king prawns (left in their shells), 12 mussels (scrubbed and debearded), ripe red tomatoes (out of season, use tinned or bottled pulp), two green pimentos, a small tin of red pimentos, a small tin of peas (or fresh peas in season), a chicken-stock cube (or homemade stock), a fish-stock cube (or homemade stock), garlic and parsley, olive oil, saffron, a bay leaf, a clove of garlic (peeled and crushed), a clove of garlic (finely chopped), fresh parsley.

Peel and deseed the tomatoes and chop them up. Put four tablespoonfuls of olive oil into the paella pan, and fry the garlic. Then fry the chicken breast and push it to the side of the paella dish. On another side of the pan, fry the green pimentos and push them with the chicken. Now fry the prawns and remove them from the paella dish. Then fry the tomato, squid, mussels and shrimps. Return the prawns to the dish and add the saffron and rice and mix them well with all the ingredients. Measure out the rice first in a mug, so that you know how much water to use. You should use twice as much water as you do rice. The water should be boiling, and before you pour it in, dissolve the stock cubes in it. If you are using homemade stock, use double the amount of stock as you do rice, in the same way as you would with water. Scatter the finely chopped parsley and garlic over the dish. Finally distribute the king prawns and the red pimentos around the dish and then don’t touch it any further or stir it while you let it simmer gently for the time it takes to cook the rice (18 to 20 minutes). Before serving, cover the dish with aluminum foil to let all the flavors mix for about five minutes. Serve the paella straight from the pan.

Baked nectarines with almond filling

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Recipes from June 2008

Making paella