Several days ago we bought a bag of something called mixed seafood in the freezer section of the store thinking we'd make some kind of luscious soup. As the week was winding down, and as I was contemplating what we actually had in the house to cook with one evening, I realized that we just didn't have all of the ingredients I would want to make a good soup. And, I didn't feel like making a quick trip to the store.
Now, I know we made a rice dish last week (see MEXICAN FRIED RICE), but while reaching into the cupboard for some of the ingredients, I noticed that I still had a half bag of paella rice. I knew that I had some saffron, too - not much, but enough to color our dish yellow rather than impart much flavor. So, I decided to come up with a combination between this traditional Spanish meal (paella) and something Mexican. I would make my Mexican paella with the seafood, rice, saffron (azafrán), tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic. The Mexican part? That would be chiles serranos instead of bell peppers.
When we opened the bag of now defrosted frozen mixed seafood, we discovered that it had some of that fake crabmeat in it. Boo. But it did have other good stuff like squid (calamar), octopus (pulpo), shrimp (camarones) and clams (almejas).
It totally worked! The pictures may not be the greatest, and they make the finished paella look a bit greasy when it wasn't at all. We served a nice cold white wine with our MEXICAN PAELLA, sliced some avocado on the side and had one of the best meals we'd had all week!
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