Ingredients preparation. For 4 people, 80 grams of paella rice per person. Fine chop the shallot, cut the squid in 2cm pieces. Grate the tomato. Add the shells, heads and tails of the prawns to 2 litres of water to create the fish stock. I had left over fish stock that I mixed afterwards. If you don’t have any, you can add a fish stock cube to give the stock a bit more flavour. Salt to taste.

Add the oil and the garlic cloves into a sauce pan. In my case, I used a cast iron pot. Low heat to allow the oil to infuse with the garlic aroma. Remove the garlic cloves once they become golden. Add the squid and stir for a couple of minutes. Move them out for now into a plate.

Now we are going to prepare the “sofrito”. Poach the shallot for a couple of minutes. When soft, add the paprika and straight after the to grated tomato. Keep stirring until the tomato juice has reduced.

At this point, you can add the fish stock. Increase the heat to medium high and wait until it boils. Add a few saffron strands. Taste it and rectify with salt to taste.

Add the squid and the rice to the boiling stock. We are going to boil at medium high for 5 minutes. We will reduce the heat to low and boil for another 7 minutes. Then, we will turn off the heat and allow the rice to finish cooking for another 5 minutes.

Once you have gone through the first 5 minutes of boiling at medium high heat and reduced the heat to low, you can start adding the prawns. They cook fairly quickly so feel free to give it an extra 2 minutes (7 minutes since it began boiling) before adding them.

Usually it should be served with a bit more stock. I rectified the recipe accordingly 😁. Hope you enjoy this variation of the traditional Paella.