Scallops, Pork Belly and Paella

We had some friends over for dinner last night to celebrate the start of the long weekend. I’ve been waiting for the right time to cook scallops and pork belly since eating it in a restaurant last year and this was the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, I didn’t take in to account just how much the pork would shrink in cooking so the portion sizes where slightly on the mean side. The combination worked very well though and the scallops were particularly fresh and tasty.

The pork was rubbed with garlic, rosemarly, salt, crushed bay leaf and olive oil before being slow roasted for four hours. This is my favourite way of eating pork belly and the flavours complimented the sweet scallops very well.

We followed this with paella which we haven’t cooked for ages. Our paella pan isn’t big enough to feed four so we had to use the wok which proved to be a fairly good susbstitute despite being the complete opposite of a flat-bottomed paella pan. As our last paella wasn’t brilliant, I spent a fair amount of time looking for a traditional recipe but, as with a lot of Spanish food, the variation was vast and often varied depending on the region. In the end I settled for a Gordon Ramsay recipe as it contained most of the elements I wanted to incorporate, it was a good starting point but not exactly as I hoped for.

Gordon’s recipe doesn’t require stock but we both felt it was needed. More garlic and thyme would have helped to increase the depth of flavour too.