Forever Nigella #6 - Sea Fish and Eat It

This month's Forever Nigella is hosted by Kat at Housewife Confidential, a lovely blog which always has gorgeous photos, and not just of food :) The theme is Sea Fish and Eat It, and it's one of my favourites so far because I adore fish of any kind and love an excuse to tell people how yummy it is and how everyone should eat more of it. When the theme was announced, I knew immediately what I wanted to make - it's a recipe I've made quite a few times now, but one of my absolute favourites. I give you...

Nigella's Pantry Paella!



You can find the recipe in Kitchen or on the BBC website here, but I do make a few changes:

I never have leftover pork, so I use chorizo instead, which I sweat with the onion so it releases its lovely spicy pinkish oils;

I don't use baby squid, I just use full-size frozen squid bodies which I open out, score in a criss-cross pattern without going right through the flesh, and cut into bite-size pieces;

I had no sherry, so I added a splash of marsala;

I added the saffron to the hot stock rather than warming the booze.


Normally I'd have also used some shellfish, because I love it so much, but it's not mussel season and the clams my friendly local fishmongers had on offer were about a million pounds, so I had to do without. Oh how I miss mussels... roll on September when they'll be nice enough to eat.

We love paella so much that we actually bought a paella pan, which really makes a difference as you get that lovely crust underneath. It hangs permanently on the wall - see how well seasoned it is!

Huge thanks to Kat for hosting and to Sarah from Maison Cupcake for all her hard work.