Neptune's Paella

I often get asked to share my Paella recipe, so here it is for the world. This is according to my friends who have had the real thing in Spain, better than anything they have ever had! I developed this recipe over the last 10 years. Enjoy!

Neptune's Paella. I feast fit for the god himself!

Neptune's Paella

By Thomas W. Watson

Serves 12-15

This is about a 250-350 dollar meal and takes 3-4 hours to prepare. I recommend making sure you have enough people to eat it, but if you don’t, it makes a mighty left over meal. I recommend having a helper to prep everything.

Ingredients:

• 2 lb of Prawns (with shells)
• 2 lb of scallops (small or large, if large, dice them)
• 4 lb of king crab
• 2.5 pounds of fresh mussels cleaned and debearded
• 1 cup of heavy whipping cream
• 2-3 large skinless chicken breasts
• 3 large boneless pork chops
• 32 oz of chicken stock (two boxes)
• 1 lb of Hard Spanish Chorizo  (super important, must be true spanish chirzo and hard. Its alread y cooked)
• 2 Habanero peppers
• 2 Jalapeno Peppers
• 1 each red, yellow orange pepper
• 1 bunch of green onions
• 2 heads of garlic
• Roughly 8 sprigs of fresh Rosemary
• Roughly 8 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 1 large red onion
• 1 small jar of capers
• Unsalted Butter
• Olive oil
• Lawry's Seasoning Salt
• Black Pepper
• Spicy Smoked Paprika
• 1 package of saffron (2 grams)
• Bomba Rice (I use the small bag of Cebolla from spanishtable.com
• 42cm Paella pan
• Garlic Press
• Large bowls to hold the ingredients

Prep:

• If this is a new Paella pan, oil it with olive oil and cook for 1.5 hours at 450 to season the pan.
• Shell the prawns and add all the shells to the chicken broth. Use scissors to remove all the crab meat, add the shells to the chicken broth. Reduce the chicken broth in half. Strain out shells, set aside.
• Dice the habaneros and jalapeños together
• Dice all the vegetables in medium to large dice.
• Dice all the meat in medium to large dice.
• Make sure to use the entire green onion (white and green part, dice normally)
• Put the entire two heads of garlic through the garlic press
• Prep the rosemary and thyme

You will need a grill, do this outside, get the grill hot as hell, lots of coals. Make sure its well burning. You need about 45-60 minute of burn time and you will not want to add coals once its started. Make sure you paella pan fits securely on your grill/fire before starting as its hard to do after.

You will want to have everything together and ready as you DO NOT want to burn the rice in the next step and it WILL go fast. Have a big paella spoon on hand as you will need this to stir everything (its like 4 feet long, make sure  you have one)

Preparing the rice:

Take your seasoned Paella pan and add some olive oil and butter (enough to sauté the rice, dont skimp, its not healthy, get over it) to it bring it to temperature (Don't burn it! Be ready to add the rice quickly when its on a grill, within a minute), add the bag of rice. Sauté on the stovetop until the rice shows the first signs of browning (do not burn, error on the side of undercooked).

Assembly: 

• Add the strained broth from earlier. Also add in the saffron Be careful, you are adding water to hot fat... let this cook for about 15-20 minutes. Stir it. Add water if need be so that the rice is covered. It will cook off very fast on a hot grill. The end goal is to get a slightly crispy crust on the rice but you have to give it a chance to cook first... this is probably the single most important thing you can do is get this rice cooking correct.
• now we will cook everything else, You should have some liquid left in the pan, the temp should be still hot but not out of control at this point. The idea is to not overcook the meats. Its easy to do. 

• Add cream onions and caper and stir
• Add pork, 3 minutes later add chicken (stir)
• add vegetables (2 minutes
• a seafood in (not muscles)
• Add the mussels on top 

Its done when the juice is gone and the rice starts to carmalize on the bottom of the pan.

-Thomas

On the grill, big spoon needed!

What it should look like while cooking