Alright, I was eager to try La Maquette’s recipe for Cajun Paella Risotto after the Toronto team visited Chef Easton Hamilton! I have always loved Paella in Barcelona and order it any chance I get at Spanish restaurants but have never made it at home. I wanted to see how the risotto goes with the Paella. Of course I’ll describe to you the pitfalls and learnings of a home chef 
Vegetable Stock
I really hate forking out more than $1 to buy vegetable broth from a can or box. It doesn’t even take much time to make so I always try to make it myself.
All you need is 2 stalks of celery, 1 onion and 1 or 2 carrots (yup that’s less than $1!). Heat up a large pot of water – I put 2L of water in. Add in a bit of olive oil, chop up the vegetables into thick slices. Bring it to a boil, add salt and pepper and put in all the vegetables.
I also added parsley to this stock because I had some on hand and a bay leaf. That’s about it, leave the heat on low and let it brew for about an hour. I didn’t use much of it because I didn’t end up making risotto but you can easily freeze it to use at a later time. We came up with the idea of putting them in ice cube trays, so you’d have individual portions of veggie broth when you need it. Another way is to fill up Glad sandwich bags since you can stack them and they don’t take up much space in the fridge.
Arborio Rice
To my disappointment – I went on an Arborio rice search across downtown Vancouver today with no luck! 2 Safeways, an IGA and Save-on-Foods. They had every kind of pasta and rice except for Arborio rice! What gives? Has there been a sudden increase of interest in making risotto?? Does anybody know why?!?! Tell us!
Well as a backup I got Uncle Ben’s long grain wild rice so I didn’t make risotto. However in the rice cooker, I did add the celery and onions I was going to put in the risotto – the rice turned out delicious!
Spanish rice is supposed to be medium grain rice thats browned with onion and garlic first. I shall try that next time if I can’t hunt down my risotto rice.
Good old Uncle Ben’s to the rescue
Proportions
Since I was cooking for 3, I doubled Chef Easton’s recipes to make enough for 4 (left overs are awesome). I find cooking for 4 a little easier because doubling his recipe means using a whole onion and all the peppers which is convenient. I also put in way more mussels and 3 Italian sausages and shrimp. I compensated by using only 1 small chicken breast.
Here’s everything prepped in my kitchen:
Chicken:
Shrimps:
Sausages:
Mussels:
Instructions
I definitely enjoyed following this simple recipe after getting everything chopped up and prepared. I found that instead of waiting 2 min in between adding the different meats, I’d wait 4-5min instead – just in case. The steps are really easy to follow – I doubled the spices, vegetable stock called for as well.
Adding chicken:
Adding sausages:
Results
I really love the colour and texture that the dish turned out to be. My pan was so overloaded with stuff that I opted out of adding rice to it. I didn’t end up using any salt or pepper as seasoning because I think the sausage was salty and the cajun spice gave the dish a great flavour.
I also added chopped parsley into the dish which turned out really good. The chef recommended trying different meats and experimenting with different spices however I stuck to the instructions and really like this combination!!!! I was so happy when my friends opted to go for seconds I think the verdict is….MAKE THIS DISH! I really recommend it. It’s not hard and so delicious. The hardest/time consuming part is going grocery shopping.
