24 Days of Spice | Day 12 - Paella

Day 12 (half way to Christmas!) was a Paella seasoning.

I’ve made vegan paella before, so I knew I had a few recipes in my cookbooks. The trick this time was adjusting to work with the ingredients I had on hand.

Interestingly, while paella traditionally has saffron (at least in all recipes I have), this mix doesn’t contain any.

I combined two recipes to get the ingredient mix, one from Ross Dobson’s Market Vegetarian and the other from Vegan Without Borders. Petite Peas, stewed tomatoes, parsley, pimento stuffed manzanilla olives, white onion, the last of the Thanksgiving green beans.

I like the ease of the Vegan Without Borders recipe. There was downtime in cooking and fewer dishes to clean. I added a full 2 cups of broth because I have a tendency to end up with crunchy rice.

The end result was pleasantly gummy and flavorful.

Paella always makes me think of Christmas because of the red tomatoes and spice and the green veggies.

Whether this tasted like a more traditional vegan paella, I don’t know. It could just be a pleasantly spiced rice dish.