Paella Verduras

A traditional paella is of course from Valencia and has chicken, rabbit and sometimes even snails. Beyond the city there are so many other "traditional" versions of this famous rice dish with chorizo, prawns, mussels and allsorts of other left-overs thrown in. So I guess all bets are off, however here I'm trying to stick to the original Valencian recipe as close as possible, only replacing the chicken/rabbit with vegetable alternatives. 


Ingredients

serves 6

400g paella rice, short grain variety such as Calasparra or Bomba  (4 cups)
225g tomatoes, halve and grated, skin discarded

1 garlic bulb, finely chopped 

pinch of saffron strands 
240g garrafó white bean/lima bean, (or butter bean or harricot bean), (drained weight) 
280g ferradura bean, (or runner beans / flat green beans)

1 tbsp pimentón dulce, (sweet smoked paprika)

2 litre vegetable stock (about 4 parts water to rice)

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 

125g eschallion shallots, finely chopped 

2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves only

salt

ground black pepper

280g chargrilled artichokes in olive oil, drained (chicken alternative)

200g Shitake mushrooms (rabbit/snails alternative)

1 large red peppers, deseeded and sliced into long thin strips 

140g peas 

to serve

2 tbsp flatleaf parsley, roughly chopped 

lemons, quartered

Method

Blanch the green beans in boiling salted water for 2 minutes. Drain and refresh with cold water.  Top and tail, and cut into bite-sized pieces Set aside with the drained white beans.

Place a large paella pan on a medium heat, preferably over a large enough heat source. 

Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the shallot, garlic. Fry for 5–6 minutes until the shallot is soft. Add the red peppers, artichokes, mushrooms and sprigs rosemary. Continue to cook until the artichokes have coloured and the peppers and mushroom softened.

Move the vegetables to the edges of the pan to stop cooking. Remove any rosemary twigs, but leave the leaves.

Add another tablespoon of olive oil to the center of the pan, then add the green beans. Fry for a minute before adding the smoked paprika. Fry for another minute then add the grated tomato.

Once the moisture from the tomatoes has evaporated stir in all the vegetables together.

Carefully pour in the vegetable stock. It will possibly fill the paella pan to the top!

Turn up the heat and bring it to a boil. Reduce the stock down by about 25%. Taste the stock and season with salt and pepper to taste.

With the stock boiling add the butter beans, saffron and rice. 

Gently stir to evenly distribute all the ingredients. Then leave the paella to cook untouched.

Firstly on a high heat for about 5-7 minutes until the rice has begun to plump up absorbing much of the stock. Then reduce the heat to medium and cook for 12 - 15 minutes.

Then finally whack the temperature back up again just for a minute to create what is called the “socarrat”  a layer of crispy caramalised rice. If succesful this shouldn't be burnt! 

Remove from the heat and cover the pan with foil and leave to rest for 5 minutes. 

Remove the foil and scatter over some chopped parsley.  Serve from the paella pan with quartered lemons.