Date Night Paella

It's not a ribeye, but what the heck, thought I should post it anyway in the effort to hit a thousand. 

After photo: (iphone pics, apologies) 


It's been a while, and timing the rice takes a little more skill than I had tonight. We did have some soccorat, but flirted with burnt bits in a few spots. More on that later. 

This is straight from the naked whiz's playbook. His primer is the definitive guide to paella on a BGE. 

Set up is a FULL charge of lump. Daisy for scale. 


I lit it in three spots. Lid open for a bit, then shut it to get the flue action going.

then, the genius move (courtesy Whiz): shut the lower vent and open the lid. Give the fire time to climb UP for a change to the top, and spread out.
  
Started with a quick sear of the proteins. If i knew what i was doing i'd have dried them a few hours after buying them. Fresh scallops and cod loin. I would have wanted a *bit* more color. But didn't wanna overcook. Salt and pepper. 



Yanked them off with a little less color than I was shooting for. Wanted more but better pale than fully cooked. You want them par (under) cooked. So next time, note to self: drain and air dry in the fridge an hour or more before searing. 

Then a hit of olive oil. When shimmering, in goes the red pepper and green beans. 


Shoulda taken a pic of these when i pulled them. Cook them only until a few of each brown at the edges. They will fully cook later. 

These go back into a bowl to wait, and another hit of oil into the pan. Then dump in grated onion and a head of garlic, cloved. Stir like a mofo. 



Slide to the outside and dump the grated tomatoes in the hot spot. Let the tomato boil down and eventually comingle the too, cook down to a dark paste. 



I colored the shrimp, because they were monsters. Again, just a head start, didn't really cook them very much. A minute or so each side. They exuded a lot of liquid (thawed from frozen), and so after i set the shrimp aside i let the sofrito absorb it and cooked it down til pastey again. 



Getting there. 

Dumped 4-1/2 cups of seafood broth (with toasted saffron) onto the soffrito [EDIT: and then added the 1-1/2 cups of bomba rice). Then let it boil a bit, until reduced by about half



When reduced a bit, maybe ten minutes, I went artsy fartsy and arrayed the beans and peppers. 



Then the other stuff. 



Mussels (not par cooked) around the outside.  Cod in the middle in a pile. Shrimp (too many!) and scallops. I ate one of the scallops earlier. And i need ONE more to maintain the symmetry. Oops. 

I let it reduce. The lid open this entire time. 

When it was 'dry' (stopped bubbling) i finally shut the lid. This finishes the fish which have only been par cooked. They did simmer a bit but need the dome heat to finish off. 

I should have lifted it onto a raised grid to slow the radiant heat on the rice. We got the crispy brown stuff, but just behan to flirt with the burn.



Good stuff. 
Google 'naked whiz paella primer'

that lump was cowboy by the way.