Seafood Paella

First, we prepare the stock for paella, what we need is a delicious fish soup preferably combined with a shrimp soup.

So, take the fish (I had sea bass) and, using a knife, carefully cut the fish fillets (find tutorials on how to fillet a fish on Youtube).

Place the bones, the heads and the remaining bits in a stockpot. Add the celery (sticks or root), some parsley and an onion.

Pour enough water to cover them completely, place over heat and let simmer for 30-40 minutes. At the end, adjust with salt, turn off heat and allow the flavours to blend for another hour.

While the soup is cooking, there is plenty of time to clean the shrimp: remove the shells, the heads etc. I only left the tails on to look nicer, but it's optional. 

Find Youtube tutorials on how to clean shrimp correctly.

Melt 10-20g butter in a small saucepan and place the empty shrimp shells. Fry and stir occasionally for 5 minutes.

Pour in 200ml water and 100ml white wine demi-sec. Let simmer for 15-20 minutes.

And, at the end, if you have saffron, I recommend steeping it in 50ml hot boiling water for 10-15 minutes. 

So, here we have the saffron, the fish soup and the shrimp soup.

Strain the soups then pour some from each soup and the saffron water into a measuring jug. You should have 600ml fish/shrimp stock combined with saffron water. If there is any remaining fish/shrimp stock, just freeze it and use it next time when making paella. 

Measure the rice using the same measuring jug, you need 300ml - that is half of the quantity of the stock. 

Then another 200ml tomato paste or crushed tomatoes.

Semi-preparing the seafood: 

Prepare the seafood mix in advance - thaw, wash, make sure it's clean.

I prefer to make my own seafood mixes, I buy peeled and deveined shrimp, squid, mussels etc. I clean and rinse them, I combine and make portions. I freeze them in small bags and use them whenever I need. 

Quickly cook the seafoon in a skillet with a little olive oil or butter. 

Tip onto a plate and set aside.

Do the same with the fish fillets we cut at step 1: quickly cook in oil in a skillet.  

Then the cleaned shrimp, the ones with their tail on. Tip onto a plate and set aside for now.

Wash the mussels. One way of preparing them would be simply boiling them in water with salt until they open.

Or you can cook them in butter and a little wine, just like in the Moules Mariniere recipe which you can find on my website. I prefer to prepare them like this, I only use a few for paella and we just enjoy the rest :) I also explained how to clean them correctly in the same recipe.

And make sure you discard the mussels which do not open after cooking.

Prepare the paella:

Pour a little olive oil in a large saucepan of about 28-30 cm in diameter. Add in 1 onion and 1 pepper cut into small dices. Fry for about 5-10 minutes, until they start to brown slightly.

Stir in the finely chopped garlic, mix and cook for 1-2 more minutes.

Add the rice, oregano and, optionally, chili flakes, stir well.

Stir in the tomato sauce.

Now pour in 600ml of stock, the soup mixture we prepared earlier.

Mix to combine and taste, adjust with salt, if needed.

Boil over high heat for 5-7 minutes.

Now stir in the fried seafood cocktail and the fried fish fillets.

Turn the heat to low and let simmer for 15 minutes, without mixing.

After 15 minutes, turn the heat to high again for 5-10 minutes, so that paella can brown slightly at the base.

5 minutes before turning off the heat, arrange the fried shrimp on top and the open mussels. 

Finally, turn off heat and let sit without a lid on, allowing all the flavours to blend for 10-15 minutes before serving the paella.

Savour the paella, maybe with lemon slices on top, let yourselves be amazed, it is fantastically tasty...

Enjoy!