Paella Negra

Spain’s most famous dish is Paella and actually it’s typical from my region, Valencia. There are as many ways to cook paella as chefs. The ingredients vary as well. In the past, people tended to use vegetables of each season. So, you would eat a different dish in the winter than in the summer. You can cook it with meat, fish, both, and even vegetarian. Today I’d like to tell you how you cook Black Rice (Paella Negra). From the name we can intuit that our paella will be black and you’ll now the reason soon. Let’s start with the ingredients:

• 14 oz. of small squid, cleaned, with their ink sacks reserved
• 1 cup olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
• 6 ¼ cups fish stock (you can make it at home or use a bouillon cube)
• 2 ½ cups long-grain rice
• 1 canned or bottled red bell pepper, drained and cut into strips
• Salt

I’ve always bought the ink ready in little plastic bags. It’s easy to find in Spain. I’m not sure if you can find it in the U.S. First cut the squid into thin rings. We’ll heat the oil in a pan and add the rings, stirring them regularly for about 5 minutes. Then, we’ll add the onion and the garlic and a little bit of our stock (it should cover the ingredients in the pan). We’ll cook that for about 20 minutes. Now, we’ll add the rice, the ink, and the rest of our stock, all with a pinch of salt. First, we’ll cook it at a high temperature for 10 minutes but then, we should lower it, put the pepper on top of it, and cook until the rice is ready. Red pepper is used in the low-cost version. You can use shrimp or mussels. It tastes even better!!!!
I like to eat it with a homemade garlic mayonnaise (allioli). The tastiest thing is the lightly burned rice on the pan. It’s delicious!! I’m going to warn you: you’ll need a nap after that!