Daily Dinner #6 with Paella

We're extending our month of daily dinner postings, but petering out a bit as I've been working stupid long hours on a deadline here.  We did a couple Spanish things this week including another fideuà and a fishy paella.

2015-08-17 Chicken and Endive

We had left-over chicken breast from the bird we roasted. We were thinking of doing a cold salad, but I decided I preferred it warm.  Irene made chicken stock from the carcass and cooked bones, some onion and garlic. We had the rendered fat -- schmaltz (I wonder what they call it in Spain) -- so I sautéed some endive until softened, then warmed through the chicken, and moistened with some of the stock.  Irene crisped up the skin until is was shatter-y and we crumbled it on as a garnish, and used a large piece as a decorative "sail".  Really easy, and quite good. 

2015-08-20 Fideuà with Mussels

Bummer, no photos of this one. While I toiled away, Irene made a fideuà of mussels she got at the grocery store on her way home from Spanish class; they were some ridiculous price, like only €2 for a half kilo or so. Unlike the farmed American ones, these were sandy and fully bearded, so it took a while to clean and prep them. Quite  a few of them were broken; I do recall that's how mussels used to be, before farmed mussels became the norm in the U.S. 

She also got our first decent stick of bread at the grocery store.  We need to find a source of two essentials we're missing here -- good bread, and good coffee.

2015-08-21 Paella with Shellfish and Squid

We got proper "Bomba" rice from the store (very affordable here) and Irene hit up her favorite fish monger in the Mercat de Sant Antoni for some fish on her way home from Spanish class. After inquiring what Irene was making and for how many, she recommended four giant prawns, for giant crawfish-like beasts, and a squid. She cleaned and cut the squid for Irene; the entire batch of fresh fish cost under €8. 

After a grueling day working, I needed to relax with some cooking. Paella's just the thing; I'll step through the process here. Off camera I cut up some "xoriz fuet" (an intense sausage, sold naked and hanging loose in the store, unrefrigerated), and sweated some bulbing onion with a big red bell pepper and some garlic. We used more of Irene's chicken stock, enriched with some Ñora chilis and some saffron.

I then sauteed the rice in a bit of olive oil: 

Added the stock:

 Some flat beans, which we've found need a fair amount of cooking, so I started them early rather than waiting until the end as I usually do when cooking at home:

And here are our "bugs" and squid.  We don't have beasts like this in our stores in the States. We've got your basic shrimp (almost universally from far east farms run by slave labor -- look it up). Here we've got a range that we simply don't have names for.

 First the big ones, since they'll need a bit more time to cook:

Then the smaller ones:

And finally the squid, which is very thick in body, more like what I'd call cuttlefish at home:

 A dusting of charcoal salt flakes for flavor and contrast and we're done.

The rice came out beautifully, fully cooked with individual grains, not a gummy mess, the squid was tender, and the big shrimpy-things were cooked through. The crawfish-like things were, perhaps, a bit overcooked. Next time, we'd cut through the shell of the crawfish to make it easier to get in -- those shells are tough!

2015-08-22 Spanish Carbonara

Casting around in the cupboards, not much came to view. Frozen chicken breast, a couple eggs, one endive, a bit of red pepper, and some cheese.  Irene started out making a version of Mac'n'cheese but the lack of a suitable pan for browning the top (teflon's a no-no at high temperature) changed the end result. 

Boil some pasta, sauté some veggies, grate some cheese, beat up a couple eggs, and there you go -- carbonara, after a fashion.