Arroz a la tumbada

As tradition built it

Arroz a la tumbada

Sotavento; serves six . 40 to 45 minutes

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• 2 cups rice
• 2/3 cup, or to taste oil
• 2 teaspoons, minced garlic
• 1/3 cup, minced onion
• 1½ cups blended and strained, plus 1 cup diced tomato, blended and diced
• 4 cups fish stock
• 4 cups water
• 18, shell on shrimp
• 1kg clams
• 200g squid
• 200g scallops
• 2 teaspoons oregano
• 1 teaspoon, minced chives
• 2 tablespoons, minced parsley
• cilantro
• epazote (household version)

Method

1. Fry the rice in oil until lightly golden with the garlic and onion.
2. Add the blended and diced tomato.
3. Add fish stock and water and simmer covered for around twenty five minutes.
4. Add the seafood in stages, the thicker-shelled shrimp and clams first, the more delicate squid and scallops only at the very end.
5. Season with oregano, chives and parsley.
6. Finish with cilantro and, in the plainer household version, epazote rather than the fuller herb list a restaurant kitchen might use. Serves six.

What a modern chef changes

Clarified stock, sous vide shellfish

Method

1. Roast the reserved fish bones and shrimp shells on a Big Green Egg run hot before making the stock.
2. Deglaze and clarify the finished stock through a chinois for real depth rather than the cloudier result a simple simmer gives.
3. Cook the more delicate shellfish, the squid and scallops, sous vide separately to a precise, still-tender doneness, folding them into the finished rice only at the very last moment.
4. Finish with a very light dusting of dehydrated, ground epazote from the spice grinder rather than only fresh, for a more concentrated herbal top note.