Vegetarian Paella (Spanish dish)

• Servings: 4-5
• Preparation time: 10 minutes.
• Frying time: 15 minutes.
• Cooking time: 10-12 minutes.
• Total time: 37 minutes.

Paella is a Spanish dish, prepared with rice; here I prepared with Japanese rice. It is actually not steamed rice but dry rice that cooked in uncovered wide and flat paella pan. A crusty residue of rice is left at the bottom adds the taste to perfect paella. It is most common dish in coastal areas of Spain and eaten on beach bars and restaurant too.

I recently purchased the sea food paella kits from ‘Hanamasa’; being Indian and vegetarian wanted to cook vegetarian version of paella. First time I prepared using zucchini, capsicum, green peas, chick peas and beans, it was so delicious, really we fell in love with this recipe.

If you do not have paella kit you may cook in other wide flat pan which are used in Indian kitchen.

Ingredients:

• Spanish rice/Japanese rice (preferably short grain): 250 gm (2 Cups)
• Note: never use Basmati rice.
• Fresh/ frozen Beans: 100 gm.
• Fresh/frozen peas: 100 gm.
• Chick peas/ Tinned: 100 gm. (half boiled)
• Capsicum:  1 no. (Medium size)
• Zucchini: 1 no.
• Vegetable stock/ water: 600 ml (5 cups)
• Note: vegetable stock of your choice
• Saffron: 1 pinch.
• Onion: 1 no. (Medium size)
• Tomato puree: 2 tablespoon
• Tomato: 1 no. (Medium size)
• Lemon: 1 no.
• Orange: 2 no. (For decoration and garnishing)
• Parsley/coriander leaves: 50 gm.
• Garlic: 3-4 flakes.
• Salt: 2 teaspoon
• Black pepper: 1 teaspoon
• Bay leaf: 2 no.
• Kashmiri red chilli powder: 1 teaspoon
• Extra virgin olive oil: 3 tablespoon

Preparation:

1. Put stock on simmer; add bay leaf and garlic leaf.
2. Crush saffron thread and put 1 tablespoon warm water, keep aside.
3. Chop Onion, Tomato, Garlic and Coriander leaves to fine pieces, keep aside.
4. Chop zucchini and capsicum (longitudinally), keep aside.
5. In a bowl prepare herbs-mixture; put chopped coriander leaves, garlic, half of lemon juice and a tablespoon of oil, keep aside.

Method:

1. Take paella pan, heat oil on medium flame; Put chopped onion, stir fry on high flame till onion gets golden in colour, add chopped zucchini, fry for couple of minutes.
2. Add prepared herbs-mixture, salt and chilli powder; stir fry for a minute, add tomatoes puree continue to cook for couple of minutes, add rice (dry rice, don’t even wash the rice).
3. Cook and stir fry for a minute till rice start to crackle; add chopped tomatoes stir fry for couple of minutes, add saffron and black pepper into the rice.
4. Add the vegetable stock, chick peas and peas; bring it to boil on medium flame, stir once and continue to cook on low heat until rice gets dry( do not stir, and never cover the pot during cooking).
5. Put off the flame; decorate with sliced oranges along with peel and red capsicum. Cover the pan with lid for 5-6 minutes; so that fragrance infuses into the recipe.
6. You may cook and serve piping hot ‘Vegetarian paella’ in the same pan just hand out fork and let everyone stuck in.

Vegetarian Paella (Spanish dish) by Nag Ratna Sahu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.