Salmorreta, The Secret Ingredient in a Great Paella

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Salmorreta is the secret behind the magic of Alicante-style seafood rices.

It is essentially a sofrito (a sauce used as a base in Spanish cooking) that you turn into a paste. So that when you make a paella, the sofrito is already done, and you simply add it by the spoonful.

Once you have this and fish stock on hand, throwing a paella together during the middle of the week becomes a real possibility.

You can even store this in the freezer for later, ensuring your future involves paella.

Salmorreta Recipe

Ingredients

4 dried ñora peppers (Buy ñora peppers here)
Olive oil
8 garlic cloves, peeled, whole
Handful of parsley, stems and all
3 small tomatoes, cut into chunks (Alternatively, you could use half a can of tomatoes, which is about 200g. If you used canned tomatoes crush them by hand.)

Instructions

Take the four dried ñora and remove the seeds and stem, and break them up into small chunks. Size doesn’t matter a ton here because you will be blending everything at the end.
Heat up a small skillet on medium high heat, and pour in enough olive oil to cover a good quarter inch on the bottom of the skillet.
Toss in the ñora, until they wake up and start to smell nice and aromatic, about 1 min.
Toss in the garlic cloves and cook them on all sides until they start to brown, another 2 mins.
Then toss in a handful of parsley (stems and all)—be careful because the water in them will cause them to splatter a little.
Toss the tomatoes into the skillet (see below for photo at this stage) and simmer for about 5 minutes. If you are using fresh tomatoes, make sure to cook it down to release the sugars. If you are using canned tomatoes, this process will be a little faster.

Pour the mixture into a blender and blend until it becomes a smooth paste, like the photo below. Store in a container in the fridge, or pop in the freezer for a longer shelf-life.