Healthy Recipe: Easy Home Roasted Veggie Paella

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RECIPE BY LEANDRA ROUSE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM EMMONS

Paella may feel like an intimidating, even out-of-reach dish reserved for fancy restaurants and faraway places. But this simple home recipe demystifies the Spanish speciality and turns it into an approachable weeknight dinner.

Paella is commonly made with a variety of seafood or game, but for this version we are making roasted seasonal vegetables the stars, creating a rich and flavorful dish. The recipe below is simple enough to make on a weeknight, but would also make a special main dish at your next dinner party.

The trick to easy home paella is to boost your boxed vegetable stock with your vegetable peels and stems (aka the “scraps”). Simmering the usually discarded ends of carrot, zucchini, and onion skins in the stock actually produces a more flavorful base to cook the rice in. Any short to medium grain rice will do, but if it’s available at your grocery store, try a Spanish rice grain like Calasparra. The best vegetable selection are those that are in season and ripe with flavor, as they will create the tastiest paella. Try to include our umami vegetables—highly savory flavored vegetables—such as eggplant, mushrooms, okra, or cauliflower. And don’t skimp on the garlic! In this recipe we roast a whole head of garlic and top the dish with caramelized cloves.

A large shallow cast iron pan helps to achieve the famous crispy rice bottom. This recipe starts on the stove top and ends in a 500 degree oven to recreate the effect of an open flame. Whatever pan you have available, be sure it is wide, shallow, and able to transfer from stove to oven.

Serve with a simple side salad or good olives. A vinegar based hot sauce makes a great additional topping as well.

Que aproveche!

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups low sodium vegetable stock

1 zucchini, sliced into disks, top and tail scraps reserved

1 red bell pepper, sliced lengthwise into strips

1 head garlic, slice ¼ inch off top to expose tops of garlic cloves, papery skin and end scraps reserved

½ bunch asparagus, bottoms trimmed and tip scraps reserved

1 small eggplant, ends removed and sliced into disks

Pinch of saffron

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, minced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 cups short- or medium-grain rice (Spanish rice such as Calasparra preferred)

1 cup of chickpeas, canned and rinsed

Salt and fresh black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon parsley for garnish

INSTRUCTIONS:

Begin by slicing your vegetables and reserving scraps such as onion ends, garlic tops, zucchini ends, and asparagus tips. Add the vegetable stock to a pot and simmer, along with all the vegetable scraps, for 20 minutes. Then strain, add a pinch of saffron, and reserve.

Wrap the garlic head in tin foil and roast along with the vegetables.

Add sliced vegetables to a baking sheet; toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper; and roast at 400 for

30 minutes. Flipping once, as needed, until vegetables are golden. Remove from the oven and set aside.

Increase the heat of the oven to 500 (or as close as your oven will get). And move the rack to the top of the oven. Keep tinfoil garlic bulb in the oven.

In the wide cast iron pan, add two tablespoons of olive oil and minced onion, and cook until translucent—for about 5 minutes. Next, add tomato paste and stir to combine. Then add the dry rice and toss evenly with onions and tomato, toasting until rice becomes translucent (for about one to three minutes). Then add the reserved vegetable stock, chickpeas, and salt and pepper. Stir to combine. Carefully transfer the pan into the hot 500 degree oven.

Let it cook at 500 for approximately 20 minutes, or until the liquid is gone from the top of the rice. Carefully remove the hot pan and the roasted garlic bulb from the oven and set on the stove top to cool. Open the tinfoil and allow the garlic to cool down before removing the garlic cloves from papers. Layer the rice evenly with roast vegetables and roasted garlic cloves. Garnish with parsley and serve immediately.

Makes 6 servings.