Welcome to Mum&sons

My two eldest boys challenged me to start a cooking blog with simple recipes that we can cook together - and my youngest one has now joined in. I am hoping they pick up some cooking and photograph skills... or that at least they learn to design and run a blog.


BLACK RICE

This is one of my favourite ways to eat Spanish rice. 

You need: 
- 1 large tomato
- half and onion
- half a red pepper
- 3 'fond d' artichokes' ( you can buy them frozen from Picard) 
- 250 g squid 
- one sachet of squid ink (add two if you want the rice really black)
- around 400 g 'bomba' rice, ideally Calasparra
- salt
- fumet 
- olive oil

Start by preparing the 'fumet', which you can do days in advance (see the recipe for 'arroz a banda http://www.mumandsons.com/2018/09/arroz-banda.html

Fry the tomato (no need to add oil) in a small pan until it gets mushy, almost liquid.

Separately fry the onion, pepper and artichokes (all cut into small cubes) over very low heat with a table spoon of olive oil for 8-10 minutes until it is all soft.

Cut the squid into small pieces. Take a paella pan, and fry the squid with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil for 3-4 minutes (be careful because they 'spit') then add the rice (a handful per person) the ink, three tablespoons of the tomato pure and three  tablespoons of the onion, peppers and artichokes mixture. Stir it for a minute or so, then add the fumet (for each volume or rice, three times the volume of fumet).

Let it bubble over intense heat for 8 minutes. Then lower the heat and wait for another 8 minutes. Finally  add a tiny drizzle of oil all around the edge of the pan and increase the heat for 3 minutes. This is to create what is called 'socarrat', which is only possible if you add fat to the rice.