Chicken and Prawn Paella

Use the widest shallow pan you own, 38-40cm if you have a paella pan. Depth is the enemy here: rice piled more than about 2cm deep steams in the middle instead of drying out, and you lose both the separate grains and the crust.

Pat the chicken dry and season it all over with the 6g of fine salt.

Crush the saffron threads between your fingers into a small bowl, pour over 3 tbsp of the hot stock and leave it to steep while you cook.

Heat the olive oil in the pan over medium-high heat until it shimmers.

Brown the chicken skin-side down for 6-8 minutes, without moving it, until the skin is deep gold and lifts off the metal cleanly.

Turn the pieces and brown the second side for 4 minutes, then move them to a plate.

Fry the prawns in the same fat for 1 minute a side, until they have just turned pink, and lift them onto the plate as well.

Take them out while they are still underdone. They go back in at the end, and prawns cooked through twice are rubber.

Turn the heat to medium and cook the onion and red pepper for 8-10 minutes, stirring, until soft and sweet.

Stir in the garlic and cook for 1 minute.

Add the grated tomato and cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring, until it has darkened to brick and the oil separates back out at the edges. That reduction is the sofrito, and it is where the flavour of the rice comes from.

Pull the pan off the heat and stir in the smoked paprika for 20 seconds. Paprika scorches in seconds over direct heat and turns acrid, and it is stirred into a pan already off the flame for that reason.

Return the pan to the heat and add the green beans and the rice.

Stir for 1-2 minutes, until every grain is coated in the sofrito.

Pour in the hot stock and the saffron with its liquid.

Tuck the chicken pieces back in among the rice, skin-side up and standing proud of the liquid so the skin stays crisp.

Shake the pan to level the rice into an even layer, and taste the liquid for salt now while there is still liquid to taste.

Do not stir it again from this point. That single instruction is the whole difference between this and the risotto in this collection: stirring rubs the starch off the grains into the liquid and gives a creamy pan, where paella wants dry, separate grains and a toasted base.

Boil hard for 8-10 minutes, turning the pan on the burner every couple of minutes so the heat reaches all of it.

Turn the heat down and simmer for a further 8-10 minutes, until the liquid has dropped to the level of the rice and craters open across the surface.

Lay the prawns on top for the last 4 minutes.

Taste a grain from the edge of the pan rather than the middle, since the edges always run ahead. It should be tender with the faintest bite left.

Turn the heat up to high for 1-2 minutes at the very end and listen. When the liquid has gone the rice starts to crackle against the metal and the smell turns toasted and nutty — that is the socarrat forming.

Take the pan off the heat the moment you smell toast. It goes from toasted to burnt in under a minute, and the nose is the only instrument that works.

Cover the pan loosely with foil or a clean cloth and rest it for 5 minutes.

Scatter over the parsley and serve straight from the pan, with the lemon wedges.