Last week Juan Carlos and Inés allowed me into the kitchen at Al-rruz to show me how to cook some of my favourite dishes off their menu, namely a mixed paella and the sailors clams. While there we also cooked some Dorado, pinchos, boquerones and steak.

First then, thanks to Juan Carlos and Inés for giving me the opportunity and to Feli and Angel for putting up with me!!!

Second thanks to the customers (especially the Soroko’s from The Long Way Round who were in with their visiting son and his friends and ended up having to pay for a meal cooked by me!!!) all of whom ate and paid for all their meals, and ……. I tend to agree with the client who said that I looked gay in the apron!!!

Fat and gay would be a more accurate description ….. if the camera makes you look fat, then eating a load of food, drinking too much and not exercising for 6 months certainly doesn’t help ….

I had wanted to learn how to cook a authentic paella for years so was really excited when we finally managed to get together. We had been talking about it for ages but for one reason or another it took a while to get our act together.

There is a video below of the day, but it is long at 30 mins, and I have ripped a DVD for Juan Carlos and Inés so hopefully you can find the time to watch some or all of it. I certainly learnt a lot. As this is Xmas I should probably put the DVD up for sale …… but then again!!!!

The single biggest surprise to me was that I had assumed that the process would be to get the rice cooking in the stock and then to add the ingredients so that they cooked in the stock …… wrong!!!

Having heated up the olive oil in the paella dish the first thing that went in was the chopped up chicken, followed by the squid, prawns and a paste made from rehydrated peppers, onions and water. Next in were the clams and the tomato paste and a sprinkle of paprika, then the rice. The reason for this is that the rice then gets coated by the olive oil so it doesn’t stick together.

Having mixed all that together 4 ladles of fish stock (made from three different types of fish always) were added and it was cooked on a high heat for 5-7 mins and then left to simmer. The ‘trick’ is once you have it going is not to disturb it too much …. make sure nothing is sticking to the dish and leave it alone.

Muscles and sliced pepper to garnish and heh presto a perfect Paella!!!

Preparation is without doubt the key in the kitchen. Not only for the dish you are cooking, but the placement of all the utensils, pans, spices, olive oil etc. Everything has a place and everything went back in its place. Space also helps a lot, with a lot of space to work and move around it was relatively stress free …… the beer helped with that of course.

I was also surprised how long things took to cook, primarily because a high heat was rarely used: the potatoes and peppers were all fried for a long time at a low heat. The pinchos were cooked a lot longer than it takes me to burn the buggers on the BBQ at home, and the fish was cooked for about twice as long as I would have thought.

It was a great opportunity and an excellent learning experience. Thanks again!!!

Photos

As ever there are more photos over on the Flickr account.

Video

This is a long video, about half an hour in total!

Click To Play

The QIK video we too before we started. You may have seen it live at the time ….. 3507 people have at the time of posting this article:

About Almerimar

Almerimar is located in the region of Andalucia, Spain. The nearest airport is 30km away in Almeria. Other airports that are within 3 hours include Malaga, Murcia, Granada, and Alicanti. Other holiday resorts in the region include Mojacar , Aguadulce and Roquetas de Mar

Almerimar is also one of the largest marinas in Spain with over 2,000 berths and excellent boatyard facilities.