Ella Risbridger's Prawn Pasta Paella
Ella Risbridger's brilliant new book 'The Kitchen Book: Good Food for Everyday' is home cooking in all its chaotic and beautiful glory. Laid out in accessible chapters; weeknight dinners, kitchen counter meals and suppers that deserve a tablecloth. Here, we have a tablecloth worthy recipe to share with you, Ella's take on paella. Ella recommends you make a Saturday of this special meal and she shows you how below.
From Ella: "This is basically a Valencian dish called fideuà, except more so: fideuà is like a paella, except with fine angel-hair pasta in place of the rice. This is like that, except we make a prawn-head bisque - genuinely achievable, I promise - and cook the pasta paella in that until everything is soft, and there is a golden tahdig-style crust on the bottom of the pan. This is the best part and you can scrape it up with your spoons once everything else is gone. And everything else will be gone.
It is one of those dishes that is maybe a little ambitious, for sure, but is also a joy. Do you need to buy expensive seafood? Yes. Do you need to shell half a kilo of raw prawns? You do. Do you need to blitz and strain and bring to a simmer? Oh, certainly. Certainly! I hope I have given you enough reason to trust me if I tell you that I think you will enjoy, if not every single element of this, then the experience as a whole. A lovely faff!
Consider this a Saturday project: morning ambling along to the fishmonger, coffee in hand; sunshine walk home; afternoon at the kitchen counter, music on, glass of something cold and delicious. An early evening bath; a little black dress. Open the doors, Manhattan in your hand, candles dancing in their lanterns. Smoke and the sea. Sunset dinner."
Get the book here. With thanks to Ella, 4th Estate and Yuki Sugiura for the photograph.
Ingredients
- 500g shell-on, head-on, king prawns
- 40ml olive oil
- 8 garlic cloves
- 4 shallots
- 4 big tomatoes on the vine 3 teaspoons sweet smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon saffron strands
- 2 bay leaves
- 500ml fish stock
- 2 celery stalks
- 250g monkfish tail, chopped into chunks
- 50-100ml white vermouth, in splashes
- 150g mussels (or clams!), scrubbed and de-bearded if necessary
- 250g vermicelli or angel-hair pasta, broken into short lengths
Method
- Peel the prawns.
- Warm 20ml of the oil in a big pan over a medium heat. Fry the prawn shells and heads and tails for 5 minutes. The shells will go from slate grey to neon-vibrant orange.
- Smash 4 of the garlic cloves with the flat of your knife; peel off the papery skin and toss the garlic into the prawn-y oil. Turn down the heat. Fry gently while you're doing everything else.
- Peel and roughly chop two of the shallots and toss them in. Stir. Using the coarse side of the box grater, shred the tomatoes into a big bowl; set the bowl aside for later and toss the tomato skins into the shallot-prawn-garlic pan. You can also add the stalk from your tomatoes: it acts kind of like a bay leaf, but more tomato-y.
- Add the sweet smoked paprika. Bloom the saffron in an egg cup - a tablespoon of warm water, plus the strands (stamens?), swirled until it's golden yellow - and tip that in too. Also, two bay leaves.
- Add 500ml fish stock to the prawn pan. Stir, and bring up to a simmer for 30 minutes. (If you were given the monkfish bone with your monkfish, add this too.)
- (This is a good time to clean the kitchen, and do some chopping: finely chop the remaining 2 shallots, the remaining 4 garlic cloves and the celery stalks. Now chop them even finer. While the chopping board is out, finely chop the parsley and set that to one side for garnish.)
- Remove the tomato stalk, if used, and decant the prawn stock - what an extraordinary colour* - with everything in it, including shells and heads, into the blender. I use the Nutribullet here: if you do too, be careful to let it cool before blitzing. Blend prawn broth until very smooth - then blend again. Pour through a fine-mesh sieve, letting it drip slowly down while leaving the shells behind. (If you need to be speedy, push it through with a silicone spatula, but it won't have the clarity.) It should come to about 700ml, so add water to thin if necessary. Set aside.
- Wipe out the pan with kitchen paper, and return to the heat.
- Add in the remaining olive oil, and when gently shimmering, fry the prawns and the monkfish for about 3 minutes, until golden and a little crispy. Lift out, and set aside.
- Scrape any nice bits off the bottom, deglaze with a splash of vermouth, and toss in the shallots, garlic, and celery stalks. Add the tomato insides. Cook for 15 minutes. Deglaze again with a big splash of vermouth.
- Check the mussels here: I just scrub mine under the tap, and discard any that won't close when I tap them on the side. (Then I put them in a bowl with a wet paper towel on top, and stick them back in the fridge.) This is a great place to stop, if you want to get ready. The house will smell fantastic, and from here it's kind of just an assembly job.
- Pasta goes into the pan. Stir. Broth goes over pasta. Stir. Another big splash of vermouth. Bring up to a simmer. Season generously with salt and pepper.
- Cook for 15 minutes without stirring, to let it form a crispy golden bottom. Add in the cooked prawns; the cooked monkfish; and stir. Heat up. All the rest of the vermouth; all the mussels.
- Lid on. Five minutes, or until the mussels open up completely. Plenty of black pepper. Serve from the cooking dish. Maybe you don't even need plates?
