Paella, Filipino Style for Christmas - Food Easy Recipe

My daughter Lauren was dying to cook paella for our Christmas Eve dinner over 10 years ago. I bought all the ingredients in the morning but I wanted to cook it already while the seafood was still fresh. My recipe for paella is one where I can pre-cook everything and place it on the pyrex dish for baking at a later time. It made sense to prepare it now then bake it just before Christmas dinner. I can’t be hassled with cooking just before the Noche Buena.

Here is my Paella, Filipino Style recipe. Nothing fancy, My daughter assisted me with the cooking.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Olive Oil

1 cup malagkit (glutinous) rice – (optional. or Japanese rice)

1 cup ordinary rice

2 minced onions

1/2 kilo chicken , cut in serving pieces

4 chorizo Filipino (or Chorizo Bilbao), sliced 1/2 inch thick diagonally

1/2 kilo big shrimps

3 alimasag

1/4 kilo squid, sliced into rings

1 cup clams

1/2 cup tahong

1 hard boiled egg, sliced

Sauce:

Prepare sauce before cooking procedure

1 can tomato paste

1 small can tomato juice

4 tablespoon sugar

1 tablesoon fine salt

1 tsp pepper

2 big red bell pepper , sliced 1/4 strips

Procedure:

1. Cook 1 cup rice and 1 cup malagkit rice (you can remove malagkit rice and just 2 cups regular rice). Set aside.

2. Saute garlic in oil . Add 2 minced onions and cook until very soft.

3. Add chicken, chorizo Filipino and cook until brown.

4. Add shrimps (unpeeled), 3 small alimasag (whole); squid, halaan or tahong.

5. Continue stirring 5 minutes

6. Add prepared sauce and simmer for a while.

7. Carefully remove chicken, etcetera from sauce (Use Slotted spoon) and transfer to a platter. You can leave a few seafoods with the sauce.

8. To the sauce, add the rice. Mix well.

If too wet, cook over low fire a few minutes more.

9. Top with chicken , shrimps, etc that you set aside in step 7.

10. Decorate with hard-boiled eggs, green peas just before serving (after baking it)

11. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes.

I remember the first time I baked this Paella. It was during the baptism of my daughter, Lauren. I wanted a simple celebration with home-cooked meals. I prepared the paella a day before the baptism celebration then placed the dish in the freezer. The next day, I baked it. Look at Lauren and I now, twenty years later still cooking the same paella dish.