Arroz negro

My first, partially successful attempt at this classic dish. My unpictured rice was not black enough, presumably I need to use more ink or less rice next time. . .

A baseline recipe (for a 30 cm paella pan):

• 5 cups of fish stock - I used one based on left over prawn heads, fish and squid off cuts.
• 1 medium white onion - finely diced
• 3 cloves of garlic - finely diced
• 2 tomatoes - halved and grated
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• 500g of cleaned squid - cut into 1 inch squares and tentacles trimmed
• 16g of squid ink (4x4gm packets)
• 500g Bomba rice
• Parsley to garnish

How?

I wanted the only textures to be rice and squid, which is why there is one additional and perhaps superfluous step with the sofrito.

Starting with the onion, garlic and tomato - fry the finely chopped onions in olive oil, in the paella pan at medium heat for 10 minutes or so. The onion should be translucent and just starting to colour at the edges. Add the garlic and continue for a few more minutes, then add the grated tomato and paste. Cook for a few minutes, then remove from the pan and blend into a paste with a stab blender. Return this to the paella pan and heat till bubbling. Now add the squid and shortly there after the ink and rice. Stir and mix what is in the pan, so there is a homogeneous level of black and then add the stock (which has been heated in another pot so it is close to boiling), until the rice is well covered, for my pan this was about 1.2 litres. Cook like any other paella - for approx 20 minutes before garnishing with parsley and resting under foil or paper for 5 minutes before serving.