Cooking time for restaurant style Spanish rice

I've just watched this video on Youtube, of Chef Victor Escobedo of Papalote in San Francisco's Mission District. In the video, he prepares and authentic, Mission style Burrito.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_kvG0X4MN0

The way he prepares the rice kind of confuses me... The rice itself is first prepared separately by frying the uncooked grains in a large quantity of oil. It is fried until the rice puffs up and takes on a golden colour. It's then put into a sieve over a metal pot, so that the oil can drain off. For the cooking liquid, he makes a thin sauce of vegetables and stock, blends it until completely smooth, and then simmers it. Then he puts the fried rice into the stock to finish the cooking process.

This is what confuses me though. He says to cover and simmer the rice, let the steam do it's thing, and that it will take about "an hour, hour and a half" to cook.

How on earth can rice take that long to cook? Or to put it another way, how can you simmer rice for an hour without it turning to paste? The ratio of rice to liquid also looks way off unless it is drained.

I'm guessing something has been lost in translation so to speak, by the editing process.

* I'm guessing the "deep frying" is basically the result of the quantities of rice, making the normal pan frying of the rice, impractical without a Bratt pan or the like. So rather than use less oil and stir the rice a lot in a large pan. He uses a lot of oil in a smaller pan.

I can't say for sure, but there are a few things about what he's doing that would make for a longer cooking time than simply boiling the rice:

1. He's simmering it, not boiling, which is a lower heat.
2. There are a lot of tomatoes used, and acid will slow down how quickly many things will soften.
3. He's likely stirring it regularly while it cooks (which is typically necessary when dealing with that much rice), so the lid isn't on it the whole time