What to do with summer vegetables (and the rice we talked about on Monday?)
Here is the answer.
Hola my friends!
On Monday we talked about the very famous Spanish rice dish paella and what kind of rice you should use to make it the best it can be. Today we are talking about something some people might call Vegetable Paella (I actually did in my book Vegetables Unleashed), but I maybe should not have, and you know why! Because according to Valencians—the ones who created paella in the first place—nothing is paella except the original rice with rabbit and chicken and butter beans and green beans (if you don’t know the 10 main ingredients to a Paella Valenciana, take a look at the amazing Wikipaella!) So that we don’t get in trouble with the Valencian paella police (I think this is a true part of the police force there), we are going to call this dish Arroz con Verduras. But the thing that Valencians say about paella is also true about this arroz: it is a reason to gather loved ones and feed them!
When you are in summertime and you have so many beautiful vegetables arriving every week at the farmer’s market, this is the perfect dish. Just use whatever vegetables you find…I never really use the same ones twice. If there are asparagus, peas, favas and artichokes still left in the market, make it with those. If you see green beans and greens, put those in too. If you are making it in colder months you can use more root vegetables. Mushrooms are always a good idea. The only thing is to use a lot of vegetables and to chop them into even pieces that are not too small and not too big, sort of in the middle.
When I make paella (or arroz con verduras), I cook it over my fire pit but you don’t need one. You can cook it over a grill as long as you get it very hot. The closer you can get the paella pan to the heat source, the better. But if you are a beginner paella maker, don’t worry. You can put it on the flame of your stove too. Or you can buy a gas burner ring that you can use for many other things and gives you an instant fire without any issues, something like the one here on La Tienda.
One more thing to note about traditional rice dishes is that many of them use sofrito. What is a sofrito? You might know sofrito from Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, but in Spain (specifically Catalunya, where we call it sofregit), it is a beautiful, simple, and classic tomato and onion sauce that is made by cooking onions very very slowly. You can do it in 45 minutes if you need to but really it’s better if you take some hours. I find the slowness of cooking the onions is like therapy, it is calming and it lets me tune out the chaos and the noises of my mind and the world. So, make the sofrito today and have your therapy, and then make the Arroz con Verduras tomorrow! Invite a lot of friends to eat. Let me know how it goes!
Arroz con Verduras
Serves 6-8