Paella with Shrimp #Recipe by Maya Corrigan

Paella is a rice dish named for the large flat pan in which it’s cooked. Originally it was farm workers' food, cooked over a wood fire. Rice was the main ingredient, with additions like tomatoes, beans, rabbit, chicken, etc. Seafood paella is now as common as land-food paella. I adapted my recipe from one made with squid that appeared in Gourmet magazine in 1992. The recipe here is for shrimp, but I've made the dish with squid and/or chicken. Paella is often seasoned with saffron, but this version does not call for it.

Ingredients

1 pound shrimp, shelled, cleaned, and patted dry with paper towels
2 + 2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
2 cups chicken broth
1 10-ounce can of diced tomatoes with green chilies
1 1/2 cups water
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 1/2 cups paella or Arborio rice
1 1/2 cups thawed frozen peas
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium high heat until hot, but short of smoking. Sauté the shrimp for one minute or until golden. Drain the shrimp on paper towels. Combine the broth, tomatoes with juice, water, paprika, and cumin, and boil the mixture in a saucepan or heat until very hot in a microwave. 

Wipe out the skillet, add 2 tablespoons or oil, and cook the garlic over low heat until softened. Add the rice to the skillet and cook it while stirring for 3 minutes. Add the broth mixture and simmer the rice for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the salt and pepper to taste and simmer the rice for 10 minutes more without stirring. Add the shrimp and cook the mixture covered over low heat for 5 minutes. Scatter the peas over the top and cook another 5 minutes.

Remove the skillet from the heat and let the paella steam covered with a dishcloth or several layers of paper towels for five minutes. Serve with lemon wedges.

This is such a colorful dish that guests are always impressed when I set the paella pan on the table, and yet it's easy and quick to prepare.

Do you have a favorite rice dish?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit my website for easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a free culinary mystery story.

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