New Year's Dinner: Paella Mixta

The theme for New Year's Eve and Day dinners is seafood.  New Year's Eve we make crab cioppino again, using leftover cioppino sauce from Christmas Eve with new Dungeness crab, scallops, shrimp, and rigatoni.  To that we add a kale salad with homemade bread crumbs, avocado, pecorino cheese, and a dressing of garlic paste, pecorino cheese, lemon juice, olive oil and salt/pepper.  All accompanied by a sliced baguette and a light-bodied cabernet sauvignon which complements the spice of the cioppino sauce.

New Year's Eve

On New Year's Day, we make paella mixta with chicken, chorizo, and shrimp.  We soak saffron threads in hot water for 15 minutes while we cook chicken, shrimp, and chorizo in a paella pan until browned.  Our old aluminum pan won't work with our new induction cooktop, so we're cooking dinner on the grill.

Ingredients

Cooking the chicken, shrimp, and chorizo

We remove the shrimp from the pan and continue cooking the chicken and chorizo with paprika, garlic, chopped tomatoes, bay leaves, and minced onions until the onions are soft.  We add the saffron mixture and  homemade chicken broth and bring to a boil.  We then add bomba rice along with artichoke hearts, peas, and roasted red peppers. 

Add in the tomatoes and onions

Add stock,  rice, artichoke hearts, peas, peppers

Continue cooking

When most of the liquid is absorbed, we return the shrimp to the pan, nestle mussels into the mixture, hinge side down, and continue cooking until the mussels have opened, the liquid is absorbed, and the rice is al dente. We remove from the heat, let it all sit for a few minutes and then serve.

With shrimp and mussels

Finishing up

Done

Served

What a great holiday dish.  We'll have to declare our own holidays occasionally in order to make paella mixta more often!

Happy New Year!  Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025!