Mid-Week Dinner: Easy Seafood Paella

Today's blog is for all those seafood lovers out there. One of my avid blog readers, Cheffie, introduced me to an off-the-shelf seafood mix by Sea Harvest: Marinara Mix (around R30 in Supermarkets). This stuff is AMAZING! You get mussels, crab sticks, calamari rings, calamari tentacles (not testicles as my waitron at Ocean Basket once told me, accidently I must add!), prawns and pieces of fish.

Speaking of Sea Harvest: Check out this cool competition where you can win a set of Jamie Oliver pots, a R2000 Shopping Voucher or a smoothie maker.

http://seaharvest2.rsvp-reply.com

Righto, this brings me back to the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 Large Onion (chopped)
2T Crushed Garlic (it never killed anyone, ok! Vampires aside)
1 pkt Sea Harvest Marinara Mix
3 cups of Rice (uncooked)
1 cup frozen Peas
1 cup frozen Sweetcorn
2T Salted Butter
Spice for Rice (quantity to taste)
Seasoning - Ina Paarman Chilli & Garlic, Black Pepper, Salt

Method:

Preparing the Rice
1. In a large pot, bring water to a boil (lots of water)
2. Add the rice and cook for around 15 minutes, until fluffy
3. Just before the rice is ready, add the peas and sweetcorn
4. When heated through, drain the rice, peas & sweetcorn
5. Place in a bowl and add Spice for Rice, according to taste preference (I use around 2T).

Preparing the Seafood Mix
1. Put the frozen seafood mix into a pot and cover with cold water.
2. Place the pot on the stove / burner and apply heat.
3. Remove and drain as soon as it comes to a boil.
4. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan (30cm), and add the onion.
5. As the onion becomes translucent, add the garlic and the butter. As this gets going, add the drained seafood mix. The seafood is already cooked in the previous stage so the aim here is just to coat everything with the onion, garlic and butter. 1 - 2 minutes, tops. Remove from heat.
6. Add the seafood to the rice mixture and mix.

Serve hot! Mmmmmmm.... Lovely! For the wine: A light-medium bodied dry wine like a Sauvignon Blanc. You could give the Buitenrverwagten Sauvignon Blanc a try?
B.T.W. Buitenrverwagten means Beyond Expectations!

Time to love you and leave you. Happy cooking... You still have immunity.