Saturday, June 18, 2011

Paella negra con esparagos


Paella negra con esparagos
Originally uploaded by EatingVideo
Black rice paella with white asparagus.

I made a small paella for lunch. I wanted to make a very dark inky rice, some of my previous attempts yielded a rice much more on the grey side, so for this dish I used a much more generous amount of ink. This paella also ends up being meatless, vegetarian friendly if you don't mind seafood products.
The ingredients are few:

Asparagus, these are very high quality canned white asparagus

cojonudos

quality assurance tab

denominacion de origen

abierta

You should taste the liquid the asparagus come canned or jarred in. If it tastes good, not overly salty or metallic tasting then save it and use it as part of your liquid for the rice. This liquid was saved and used. (about 3/4 cup)

I also used a high quality cuttlefish/squid ink. I've used the little envelopes before and they are just ok, this really has a great squid aroma, and also I believe, a higher protein/collagen content. It is thicker and ends up being very unctuous in the finished product.

cuttlefish ink

I used a cup and a half of bomba rice

Paella Rice

I used hot pimenton as I figured the heat would go well with the ink and scarcity of ingredients

pimenton picante




Chopped onions and garlic round up the ingredients.

onions

Preparation; I heated up a small paella pan

Paella

Added olive oil and sauteed the onions and garlic

onion and garlic

as soon as the garlic began to brown I added the rice and sauteed it with the onions and garlic

sofriendo el arroz

After half a minute or so I added the pimenton, about one teaspoon

pimenton added

I mixed it in and quickly added my liquid (the pimenton can burn and turn bitter rather quickly) which was just the asparagus water and regular water to make up 3 times the rice volume, so in this case 4 and a half cups

liquid added

I then added two heaping teaspoons of the ink

two teaspoons

I mixed to incorporate and tasted for salt.

boil

The ink adds a bit of salt but it still needed a pinch more. I let it boil on the stovetop and the color began to set

rice cooking

It was very fragrant, smelling of the sea with clearly noticeable squid aroma.
When the rice was nearly dry I added the asparagus over top, they are already cooked so just need to warm up a bit.

Paella negra hecha

Served the dish was excellent, a very unctuous mouth feel, almost silky awesome ocean taste with a nice texture and taste contrast from the asparagus.

Paella negra plated

Clearly the rice turned a deep shiny black which I really liked. The ink would also make a great base for a pasta sauce. May have to buy some squid bodies and stuff them with the leftover rice, they would be nice grilled. Excellent dish overall.

3 comments:

veron said...

I love squid ink, had it in pasta before and it was delish. I can only imagine it would do the same for paella rice!

Borinkeando said...

Este arroz con calamares se ve sabroso, sabroso!! tengo unas latitas guardadas para preparar uno así y que me quede negrito como este.. así es como lo hacia mi mama y digo lo hacia por que ahora tiene la terrible mania de lavar todo y le bota la tinta a los calamares y a los quingombó(ocra) ...
esta semana va a estar unos días conmigo y quiero que preparemos juntas una carne mechada :) ya veras la receta por ahí..

BaconGrease said...

@Veron, I've been thinking of making some pasta with the ink in it... but I'm a bit afraid as pasta isn't my usual thing.
@Sazon Boricua, Me encanta la carne mechada, seguire chequendo el blog!