Recipes with saffron

Hi,

in my kitchen i have some safran and i would like to cook some dishes with it. the safran is already a year old but i hope that doesn't mean i cannot use it anymore.

i have googled to get some recipes that include safran but i wanted some ideas from you.

thank you.

Paella! Let me go and get my recipe..
Et voila:

780ml chicken stock
12 saffron threads, crushed,
125g chorizo or other spicy pork sausage sliced into 5mm rounds
4 tbsp olive oil
1 kg peeled and deveined large uncooked prawns
175g snow peas/mange-touts, trimmed
1 small onion chopped
2 small spring onions chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
300 g risotto rice
350 g canned plum tomatoes (recipe calls for fresh, but it's a pain to peel, deseed etc) chopped
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp crushed dried chillies
1/4 tsp grated lemon zest
125 ml dry white wine
1 tbsp Pernod or other anise-flavoured liqueur
4 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
salt & pepper

In large saucepan, combine stock and saffron and bring to simmer. Remove from heat, cover and keep warm.
1n a 35 cm paella pan or frying pan, cook chorizo over medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until browned. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Set aside.
Remove excess grease from pan, add 1 tbsp of oil and saute prans over med-high heat until they just begin to turn pink, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Remove prawns and set aside.
Add 1 tbsp of oil and snow peas to pan and saute for about 30 seconds. Season and remove.
Add remaining 2 tbsps oil, onion and spring onion. Cook until softened, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook another minute. Stir rice into mixture, stirring until all grains are coated with oil. Stir in tomatoes, bay leaf, chili flakes, lemon zest, wine and 600 ml of the warm saffron-stock mix. Season with salt and pepper.
Bring just to a boil, stirring. Reduce heat to low, cover pan and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until most of the liquid is absorbed. If the rice looks dry in this time, add more of the stock.
Discard bay leaft, sprinkle in Pernod and 3 tbsps of parsley and toss to mix.
Arrange snowpeas, prawns and chorizo on top of the paella, pressing them gently into rice. Cook over low heat, covered, or 5 to 10 minutes, until prawns and peas are finished.
Sprinkle with remaining parsley and serve immediately from the pan.

Risotto alla Milanese

Agree with showem, some safran on your cupboard is the perfect excuse for preparing a delicious Paella.

If its powdered saffran and one year old, bin it. Worthless. If its the nice little strands, it should be ok, but won't give the almost overpowering heady aroma that saffron is know for.

Mussel and Saffron Soup

Chuck half a bottle of white wine in a pan, and throw in 500g of mussels. Cook until open, strain and save the liquor, then shell the mussels when cool enough to handle. Set aside some of the nicer, plumper little fellows.

Chop up up a 1/2 an onion or a shallot, a small carrot, and half a leek, and saute in some butter and olive oil until softened. Add a crushed garlic clove, and a small bunch of parsley. Cook for a couple of minutes, then add the mussels, and the strained wine mixture. Simmer for, I dunno, say, 20 minutes, then whack the whole lot through a sieve, prefereably a metal one, and push everything quite hard to extract all the juices well. REtunr the liquid to a clean pan, add 200ml or so of thick double cream, and a good pinch of saffron. Bring it up to boiling point, skim off any scum, and add the reserved mussels, and maybe a bood pinch of chopped chives or parsley. Fodder with some decent bread.

oh yum... paella! i'm jealous! feel free to share!

will try both recipes and let you know how i got on.
(btw, it's little strands, was a present from kuwait)
it's mussle season isn't ? septembER right?

Mussles are pretty much available all year nowadays. Me and 3Lions got a load in a month without an r in it, and they were not particularly good really. None of the sweetness. September should be good enough. Poseidon on Viktualianmarkt is the place to go. Sell a great selection of different types of coooool clams too. Plus, they speak French there, so you do not have to make yourself really upset by having to order stuff in stupid German.

might sound boring, but mashed potato with Saf works really well. Soak saf in a bit of milk for half an hour, milk turns yellow, mix that in with the potatos and butter. Makes mashed taters a far more interesting side.

You could do a more authentic paella using rabbit and chicken - none of this chorizo and prawn business, something you'll be hard pressed to find in a paella in Spain I have to say. The only veg you'll need are the flat green beans and white beans. Make sure not to stir it though - the burnt crust on the bottom is the best bit. No chili, nor lemon zest, nor alcohol is needed either - just water or a light stock.

Yes, thank you Uncle Know-It-All Jamal. Why don't you contribute your own recipe instead of just trashing mine?

Swedish saffron buns. Great with coffee, even better at xmas with gluhwein or gloegg as the swedes call it.

A good spicy chorizo gives a great taste to a Paella. Prawns and other kind of seafood is part of the original paellas, and they also give it a delicious taste. Chicken would be a good thing to add though.
Hmm, now I got hungry

Me too, I have only had it once or twice but its exactly my kind of feed.
So can you get this saffron stuff anywhere?
Might have to give some to the missus tonight as a present before dinner time

If you are going to try and be a smartarse ponce, its rabbit and snails mate - a dish, incidentally, that you will NEVER find in 99% of the parts of Spain people are likely to visit. Its going to be chicken and seafood all the way almost everywhere. Tourist paella maybe? Perhpas, but the dish internationally reknowned as paella is going to be seafood and probably chicken. More authentic rabbit and chicken my arse. Paella just refers to the vessel, and is no more authoritative than "cazuela" or"casserole" as a recipe. Or "pie" for that matter. What about the black one with squid ink? Not a "real" paella? Country cooking being 100% reliant on seasonal products, loads of different ingredients are used. The argument about a "true" cassoulet is worthy of note, as is the continual furour over the constituents of a sauce "perigoud" (or should that be "peregourdine"? Hmm, another matter entirely). The roots of a "true" paella though are far less noble as a point of debate, because as with alot of recipes, people who live 3 miles from one another will disagree with what does and does not go in a "paella"




A blatant lie told by millions of Spanish women, who simply cannot control the fucking heat properly. I can cook a paella over an open flame, and never burn it. Some caramelisation? Good. Big thick blackened layer of leathery crap at the bottom? Crap cooking. End of. The "best bit" concept comes from nothing more than people's childhood memories, which are very forgiving about shit cooking technique. We all like "mums" food, but frankly, most mums are hardly fantastic at cooking.

@Showem- Thanks for the Paella recipe. I made it last night as I had some guests over. Modified it a bit though, left out the alcohol, and also added chicken, fresh mussels and more garlic. Served up with fresh lemon wedges. Was a dream!

Below a pic:

What a bunch of whining fucks you are. I visit Valencia, home of Paella, regularly and I know what I'm talking about. A truly authentic one was made with chicken and rat in times past, however today what is commonly regarded as the standard paella is chicken and rabbit. Chorizo makes no appearances in the paellas I have seen. True, there are many varieties, arroz negro is indeed a paella, as is any dish of rice cooked in a large flat pan, but it's very expensive in comparison and not something you'd eat every week. The chicken and rabbit one by contrast is. It does often include snails, you're right, but equally often it doesn't.

All the Mum's I know there are great cooks. But to the point at hand, most people go out to eat paella, or order them and bring them home - they rarely make them themselves. The "burnt" bit (approximately 3mm thick if you want to be precise) is the bit we (i.e. my local family in law) all fight for. Facts. Simple.

I am not a bunch.

So you go to the hallowed "home" of paella, and eat in-laws paella. In lawws you are no doubt polite to. HArdly going to say "sorry, you idiots cannot cook, you should not burn the shit dude" are you? No. And your inlaws will like it due to never having known any different. Sometimes rabbit, sometimes snails, sometimes not? You are proving my point. As to expense, well the pig farmer with no rabbits will make it with pork. Shock horror, yes even in Valencia. The guy living at the beach will use some other shit.
This thread was about saffron anyway, and you if you go to spain so often, you will know full well what the majority of people use for their super authentic, only mine is right, paella recipe. Colorante alimentario. Rows of the shit at every single supermarket.

@ nuwoman: you beat me :-)
i am planning to cook the paella and/or soup next week and will report back.

Mate - read what I wrote. They do NOT cook the paella themselves. No one really ever does.

When it comes down to it I'll take their opinion over yours where their own cuisine is concerned every time ta.

You'll find it at most of the Indian shops, although since it's so expensive you'll probably have to specifically ask for it rather than finding it on the shelves.

Just asked my secretary, who is from Valencia, what's in a paella - his simple answer was 'rice, and anything else'. Further investigation reveals that his Dad would be horrified at the suggestion that chorizo can be found in a paella. Seems to be generational to me.

Damn thats my one and only food allergy.. Food coloring will have to do instead.

I can assure the aversion to chorizo is not generational, rather it's cultural.

That would be your mistake to make. Locals do NOT necessarily cook their own food well.

Regardless of all that, you don't value my opinion, but seem to think you can cast dispersions on a recipe that somebody posted in good faith, yet you yourself, are not a valencian, and know less about food than me, so your opinion must be, by your own standards, fucking worthless. I've helped people open restaurants in Spain, lived in Spain, and studied Spanish fodder more than the vast majority of the "locals", but my mind is a little more open than many of theirs about the adaptability and evolution of recipes. "Their" cuisine? Sorry, but I see it as part of mine. If you wanted to point out some indiscrepencies in a paella recipe, then fine, but you could have done it well, explaining how to trap some rabbits, and clean out snails. instead you took the pedant route of simply saying "ah, thats not paella, I should know, I've actually been to Spain, smarm smarm, and not tourist spain, real spain, smarm smarm, where they would NEVER put prawns in a paella."
Your "local" knowledge completely misses the international context. Try and travel more maybe. Or learn about food.

Anyway, what does it all matter. You can go to your inlaws, and sit and tut and gloat about some English fuckwit who thinks that there are more than one variety of paella, and all chuckle away. Maybe that recipe posted should have been titled differently, so as not to offend your fake valencian roots. Hard to argue that rabbit should go in a paella de mariscos.

I happen to know they do though.

I won't lower myself to the kind of petty personal digs you've just made mate. The thread has gone off topic enough. Suffice to say though that adding chorizo to a paella is criminal. Fact.

Chow.

Because only ouy have ever been to Spain, only you know the "secrets", even though you probably cannot cook a fucjking sausage on the barbeque without cremating the fucker. Oh yeah, but the burnt bit its the best yeah?

Only a matter of time until the twin turned up. Well done Crawlie. But that's not a dig, that was a fairly accurate observation.

A couple of mm = a cremation now? Cmon Donald you can read better than that. Fuck me you get carried away. Have a gin and tonic.

Still waiting for a recipe with saffron from you UJ.

here is a pic of the mussel soup with saffran
it was delicious

El bacono con el huevo con el saffrano.

El eggo en el pano.

El bacono en el pano.

El saffrano en el pano.

Niiiiiiiiice.