Paella for 50

I am tasked to cater this weekend for my bosses 50th birthday. I decided to cook paella. However, there is a strct requirement for the paella to be vegetarian. Paella is not a typical vegetarian dish, benefitting as it does from chicken stock, chorizo, seafood etc. But helpfully Moro have included a recipe in their Casa Moro book and I decided to use that, tweaking it slightly by adding some broad beans as they are in season. There are a few notable points when deconstructing this recipe. Moro reckon on 4 times as much stock as rice which is more than you will see in certain recipes, but assumes you are using a high-quality calasparra/bomba rice which will absorb a great deal of liquid. They also suggest 62.5g of rice for a main course portion, or 41g for a tapas style portion. This is less than you will find suggested in various howto guides on the net. Although paella is all about the rice, I think the lower amount probably yields a more interesting result so I am figuring on 50 portions of 50g each, cooked in two batches. Here’s a Google spreadsheet I knocked up to help calculate quantities for a vegetarian paella with an example for 50 (2 x 25 portions). I’ll report back.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkNPpmDaw5GhdDdWSWdDejl0Y05rcEJEdnJhRk1fWXc&hl=en&authkey=CN3poqID

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