Recently I hosted a Finders Seekers Mystery night for six people at my house. Finders Seekers is a monthly subscription box (though you can skip boxes anytime which I do) where each month the mystery takes place in a different travel destination in the world. This box was for Barcelona. I decided to make a vegan paella for our little party.
With each box Finders Seekers provides some suggested immersive experience ideas for the travel destination in the form of a music playlist on Spotify and food and drink recipes. We used their playlist from their Barcelona immersion ideas, but the recipes for Spanish meatballs, Ham croquettes, Pan con tomato, and Patatas bravas was too much work to make so many different tapas. I thought a paella would be perfect because it’s one main dish that doesn’t require too much effort during a get together – in fact a critical point is not stirring the paella while cooking.
My take on Vegan Paella is based mainly on my friend Plating and Pairing’s own take on a vegetarian paella with artichokes, but I swapped out the artichokes to use some roasted broccoli, and used fresh red peppers instead of piquillo peppers. That was just my preference instead of using jarred ingredients, and you could add in any veggies of your choice really. I also used bomba rice instead of arborio rice, because that’s what I had and it’s the rice native to Spain- it has a more firm texture then arborio which is more typically used for risotto but arborio (though it’s Italian) is a fine substitute and is more available in stores and priced a little cheaper.
I also used a vegan mayo base for the garlicky aioli side, and since only 1 person in our party was vegan, I sauteed some smoked green chorizo (chorizo made with spinach) on the side that people could also add to their dish. I offered a side of roasted asparagus, either plain with just olive oil and salt and pepper, or with a tarragon dressing. If you’d like though Erin also suggests some additional dishes to serve with paella.
This recipe makes vegan paella for six people
Ingredients
Garlickly Aioli Side for the Vegan Paella:
- 1/4 cup Best Foods or your choice of brand vegan mayonnaise
- 1 clove grated garlic
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
- Pinch saffron
- Pinch salt
Herb Blend prepare to add to Paella cooking step later:
- 1 cup chopped fresh parsley
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 2 cloves grated or minced garlic
- Generous pinch each of salt and pepper
Vegan Paella:
- 1 14.5 ounce can petite diced tomatoes
- 4 cups of vegetable stock
- 2 cups water
- ½ teaspoon saffron threads
- 3 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion (minced)
- 4 large cloves of minced garlic
- 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 3 cups uncooked bomba rice (or used arborio rice)
- 1 cup frozen green peas
- 1 stalk of broccoli, cut into florets, with a spritz of olive oil spray or mixed with 1 teaspoon of olive oil
- 2 red peppers, sliced into thin strips. I used mine raw to add something more firm to the vegan paella but I considered grilling and then slicing these too for more smoky flavors
- Lemon wedges (optional)
- Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Directions
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In a small bowl, create your garlickly aioli that can be served as an accompaniment for the paella. I used our favorite vegan dressing and spread from Best Foods, which I think tastes the closest to regular mayo. Anyway, combine the 1/4 cup mayonnaise with the 1 clove grated garlic, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, and pinch of salt and pinch of saffron and fold until well blended. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
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Combine the ingredients for the herb blend – the 1 cup chopped fresh parsley, 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice, 1 Tablespoon olive oil, 2 cloves of grated or minced garlic, and a pinch of salt and pepper – in a small bowl and set aside for now.
- Drain the 14.5 can of petite diced tomatoes well, using a mesh strainer to push the juices out. Set aside for now.
- Combine the 4 cups of vegetable stock with the 2 cups of water and teaspoon of saffron in a pot to make a saffron vegetable stock. Bring to a simmer to release the saffron flavors but don’t let boil – just keep it warm over low heat.
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At the same time, add 3 tablespoons of olive oil to a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the yellow onion you have minced onion and cook until softened and transluscent – I even waited for it to just start to brown just a tinge.
- Add the drained tomatoes to the onions and sauté another 3 minutes. Add both the sweet and smoked paprikas and the 4 cloves of minced garlic. Mix.
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Add the rice and stir to coat the grains.
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Add the herb mixture we set aside earlier, the 1 cup of frozen peas and carefully spoon in and then pour the 6 cups of stock mixture and stir to distribute evenly.
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Without stirring, let the liquid come to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook for 30-40 minutes, until all of the liquid has been absorbed. DO NOT STIR.
- While the paella rice is cooking, heat the oven to 400 degrees F. You can choose to just add the broccoli florets to the paella by sticking it on top while it cooks, but I wanted the broccoli to be tender but not mushy, and still bright green. So with a spritz of olive oil spray or mixed with 1 teaspoon of olive oil, I put the broccoli in the oven to roast for 3-5 minutes until a bright green and then removed and set aside to top the rice later.
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When the vegan paella is cooked and the rice looks fluffy and moist, turn the heat up a few minutes until you can smell the rice toast at the bottom to get that crispy rice/soccarat bottom.
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Remove from heat and arrange the slices of red pepper and the slightly roasted broccoli florets on top. Let the vegan paella stand as is for at 10 minutes or so.
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Serve the vegan paella in the pan with the garlicky aioli, lemon wedges to add a bright and citrusy flavor to the dish, and salt and pepper so everyone can season to their taste.
I don’t have a recipe for the asparagus – half of which I served plain the rest with a tarragon dressing I have from my other monthly subscription box from Lazy Susan and Table 22 which is a prepared dinner for two delivered from a restaurant I love that’s really inconveniently located from me. The smoked green chorizo sausage I purchased from Greenville Farms at the Portland Farmers Market is already fully cooked so only needed to be sauteed for two minutes to reheat. I had leftovers from this meal and also leftover olives and ended up chopping some of the olives to add to the paella the next day.
As an additional or alternative sauce, you could consider how my favorite paella restaurant in Portland, Can Font, serves up their seasonal vegan paella – with picada sauce (similar to pesto) and a sundried tomato-piquillo sauce. And how beautiful is their seasonal vegetable selection?
Mystery Box
I dived straight into the vegan paella recipe, but maybe you are curious about this mystery box? Inside each Finders Seekers month’s box is a mystery that you can solve, usually with about 9 puzzles. After solving the nine puzzles for this storyline we were able to narrow down a list of suspects to nine people, each who provided a clue that we then had to unravel to get the final “password”. Finders Keepers hosted a website where we could put in this password and if we were right, read the end of this mystery story.
The kind of puzzles you can solve vary, in this box it included a word search, a puzzle with scissors and paper where we had to cut and fold a little, a few visual puzzles decoding a name, and a logic puzzle similar to two truths and a lie. We would scratch off the name on the suspect list if we thought it was the right name, and it would tell us if we were right and their password hint – we didn’t scratch off any wrong suspects but I guess it would tell us we had the wrong person? There were hints available in mirrored type for each puzzle in a sheet of paper, and there is also a Facebook group where other Finders Seekers participants provided some small hints to each other. For the final password puzzle multiple progressive hints were available on the website if needed. The ones on paper that didn’t require the scissors and folding were printed double-sided (1 puzzle on each side) to reduce waste, but two puzzles were also physical objects – the pencil case and a rally towel for Futbol.
With the six of us, we each were able to individually solve 1 for the group, but also worked together on a few of the tricker ones, throwing back and forth ideas on how to figure out the name. Overall, it took us perhaps 3 hours together as we also drank sour beers, snacking on Spanish cheeses and olives and chatting.
The one thing I would suggest is have pens and notepads available for everyone to try to take notes as everyone tries to figure out the puzzle. You can see I also took a photo of many of the individual puzzles in case we made a mistake and wanted to redo something, but we didn’t have that happen. If you want the option of multiple people working on the same puzzle, you might think about scanning and printing that copy. We did that for the Magic Fountain of Montjuic puzzle.
Each box costs $30 a month plus $5 shipping in the US, but you can get a discount with codes or prepaying in multiple month increments. As an activity for six people instead of paying individual entry to an escape room, I thought this was a good value and we were able to enjoy the comfort of my home and a cat observing us. It’s a fun alternative to passively watching TV and more interactive then doing traditional jigsaw puzzles and easy to start immediately playing unlike a board game. On the other hand I’m not sure how to replay the mystery once solved unless you have copies of everything.
Each month’s mystery is different, this was themed Barcelona and included highlighting different spots in the city as well as giving us a little background on the rivalry of Gaudi and Picasso and the controversy of the Sagrada Família construction which is still unfinished even though it started in 1882- all which are real life.
Previous months have included New Zealand, Scotland, Machu Picchu, US National Parks, Beijing, etc. The one themed Switzerland is next on my list to do and highlights a real life heist as it’s base! After that I paused my subscription until we get to the theme of Petra, Athens, and Mexico City, all of which I am looking forward to (you can see the themes for the year scheduled at their Game Q&A) and previous themes at their blog. Sometimes they have previous boxes from extra inventory at their online shop, so you can buy a box on its own, or gift yourself or someone a box to try out just one.
This Mystery Box from Finders Seekers and prepared food I reheat from local restaurants and Table 22 partnerships are the only subscriptions I have now. Do you have any subscription boxes you enjoy – what are they?
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