Paellaish

I made a sort of vaguely paella-like dish because I picked up 1/2 lb of squid from Whole Foods ($8.99 a pound; the cheapest seafood excluding mussels, whose shell adds a lot of weight)

Heat a kettle full of water.

Heat a generous glug of olive oil in a cast-iron skillet until shimmering. Add 4 large cloves garlic, roughly chopped, and heat over medium-low heat until fragrant but not brown. Add 1 carrot, diced, and 1 tumbler full of white basmati rice. Add a large pinch of saffron. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes, until the rice is coated with oil and starting to get toasty and golden.

Pour some of the hot water over the rice mixture.  Add more hot water whenever the pan seems to be running dry.

Cut up the squid into pieces (cut the tops into rings, cut the tentacles into manageable chunks) and add to the pan.

Dice about 1 cup crimini mushrooms and add to pan, stirring. 

Add dashes of turmeric, smoked paprika, a chicken bouillon cube, salt, and long pepper.

Make a chiffonade of a few leaves of dinosaur kale and stir in. Add a few sun-dried tomatoes and pan-fried tempeh crumbles.

Stir in fresh oregano, flat-leaf parsley, and green onions just before serving. 

I wasn’t super happy with this–it was fine, and fairly tasty, but I was picturing a fluffy, dryish, golden pile of saffron-scented rice with a crust of crunchy socarrat on the bottom, and it came out a bit mushy and a vague, fried-rice taupe color despite my cheater’s spoonful of turmeric. Rahul said it needed some acidity–haven’t tried doctoring it with lemon juice or anything. I looked up paella just now (should probably have done this before cooking dinner, but I was hungry) and this article suggests that short-grain rice and not stirring are essential. Oops.