Portuguese Seafood Rice: Arroz de Marisco

"Arroz de Marisco" is one of the iconic dishes of Portuguese cuisine. Although recipes vary, especially about the types of seafood used, shrimp is included in almost all recipes, with 2 or 3 other types of seafood often chosen by its availability from among: scallops, mussels, crab, lobster, squid and various choices for white fish, like cod ('bacalhau,' in Portuguese; that is, salted and dried cod),* halibut, haddock.   

If you shell and clean the shrimp yourself, you can use the shells to help make stock for the dish by adding the shells in with the shrimp when you initially cook the shrimp. Just use the large parts of the shells so that it is easy to pick the shells out of the liquid. You don't have to clean and shell the shrimp, you can buy them already cleaned. Trust me, the earth will not stop turning based upon whether you cleaned the shrimp yourself. You will use about 1 1/2 cups of this liquid for the recipe (see below). You can buy the clam juice used in the recipe in supermarkets or perhaps in some fish and seafood shops. It comes in bottles. This rice isn't meant to be completely dry, where it has absorbed all of the liquid; so, don't cook it until that happens. When the rice is tender and the fish and scallops are cooked, that's it, IT'S DONE! Some good crusty bread is excellent for sopping up the remaining broth.

 

Ingredients (4 to 6 servings):

 

1 pound cleaned and shelled medium shrimp

1/2 pound scallops (bay or sea scallops out of their shells)**

1 pound firm white fish (for the photos below, I used halibut), cut into bite-sized pieces

1 1/2 cups arborio rice 

1 cup chopped onion

5 cloves garlic, minced

2/3 cup chopped red bell pepper

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil + (likely) 1 more tablespoon olive oil

1 cup dry white wine

1 cup clam juice

1 1/2 cups cooking liquid water from shrimp

1 good pinch of saffron threads, or 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground white pepper (or ground black pepper)

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon salt 

 

Put the shrimp (and shells, if using) into a pan over medium heat and cover them with water. Bring the shrimp to a boil and reduce heat to low. Let cook until the shrimp are almost done. Save 1 1/2 cups of the liquid for the recipe (discard any shells used), and cut the shrimp in half (across, not lengthwise). Set the shrimp and the reserved liquid aside.

 

I use a large skillet, but you can use a heavy-bottomed pan. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter to the skillet/pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the chopped onion and stir it around a little and let it cook for 2 to 3 minutes before stirring in the minced garlic and the chopped red bell pepper, and stir the ingredients around until the bell pepper softens somewhat. (If at some point, you feel another tablespoon of oil is needed, add it.) Now add the arborio rice and let it cook for 3 or 4 minutes, stirring the ingredients around occasionally to prevent sticking and burning. Add the white wine and stir, then crush the saffron threads in the palm of your hand and add them to the pan (or stir in the turmeric, if using), along with the white pepper, stir again until the liquid is almost absorbed by the rice, then add the clam juice and do the same, stirring until it is almost absorbed. Now mix the salt into the liquid from the shrimp, and add this liquid to the pan, stirring again. Add the bay scallops and stir and mix them into the rice (the rice should still be in the process of absorbing much of the shrimp broth). Then add the pieces of white fish and the chopped cilantro and mix them into the rice. The scallops and the fish should cook pretty quickly. Add the shrimp halves and mix them into the rice; cook only until the shrimp is heated through and the rice is tender. Any excess liquid if fine, the dish is usually served that way, with bread served to help sop up the broth.   

 

* Portugal is known for its dried, salted cod called 'bacalhau.' The country is home to hundreds of recipes for bacalhau. Portugal imports much of its dried, salted cod from Norway, taking virtually all of the Scandinavian country's cod available for export. 

 

** If you use sea scallops, which are larger than bay scallops, cut them into 3 or 4 pieces.

 

'Arroz de Marisco' with some sliced tomatoes and crusty bread ... 

WORD HISTORY:

Reply (Replicate)-"Reply" is related to quite a number of words, including: "plait/pleat," "complex," "complexion," all Latin-derived words borrowed from French/Anglo-French, and it's related to "flax," a word from the Germanic roots of English. "Reply" goes back to Indo European "plek," with the notion of "to plait, to fold together, to weave or braid." This gave Latin the verb "plicare," meaning "to fold," and "replicare," with the "re" being a Latin prefix generally meaning "again, back. "Replicare" meant "to fold back," but also, "to repeat," and later also, "to respond." "Replicare" gave Old French "replier," meaning "to fold (up), to refold;" that is, "to fold again;" thus, "repeat," and "respond." English borrowed the word in the latter part of the 1300s as "replien, which then became "replyen," before the modern form. The English meanings were: "to make an answer to something (including in the legal sense of  'answer an accusation or charge'), oppose, retaliate." The noun developed from the verb in the mid 1500s with the meaning, "a written or a voiced response to something."