Friday, December 18, 2009

Black rice (Arroz con calamares en su tinta, Arros negre)

As nasty as it may sound, a typical dish in Catalonia is Black Rice (rice with black ink). It does not taste like a chewed pen, the ink gives a wonderful color and flavor. The ideal thing would be to use real ink, but I am going to give here a more pedestrian version of the recipe, for low budgets and not a lot of shopping time. 


Ingredients:
* 2 cans of cuttle fish in their own ink Goya
* 1 cup of  rice
* 1/2 onion peeled and finely chopped
* 1/4 cup tomato puree (crushed tomatoes or from a can, without additives)
* 3 garlic gloves, peeled and finely chopped
* 2 boiled eggs
* 1 fish bouillon cube
* 2 Tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
* Splash olive oil
* Pinch of salt
* Pinch of black pepper


In a saucepan, heat about 2 cups of water and dissolve the fish bouillon cube. Keep the bouillon warm. 
Pour a little bit of olive oil in a pot, heat it, and then brown the garlic. When the garlic starts getting color, add the onion. Once again, when the onion starts getting soft and acquiring color, throw the tomato in the mix. This is called sofrito, the base of many Spanish dishes. Fry everything together for a few minutes and then add the two cans of cuttle fish (squids). Stir everything together about 5 minutes and add the rice. Again, stir for 5 minutes and then add about half of the fish bouillon. Sprinkle the salt and pepper and add the parsley. Over low heat, keep stirring the rice, making sure it does not stick to the bottom. The goal is to cook it until it gets soft. Keep on adding more bouillon as needed to achieve this goal. The rice needs to absorb all the liquid and the mix needs to thicken.  Before the liquid is all gone, add a grated egg. 
Serving suggestion: topped with a grated boiled egg.


Preparation time: about 1 hour

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