less than three words

paella-ing around

April 23, 2009 at 8:05 pm (Uncategorized)

Let’s talk paella. If you don’t yet know what it is, flash back to 2005 for a second when it was really trendy, then click here and learn about it. This is my go-to dish when I’m cooking for a special gentleman for the first time. Or when my parents ask for it. You know, or a Tuesday. It seems that paella has become more and more trendy in the past four or five years, but it could just be that I’ve become more aware of people hyping it up. I suspect the former, mostly because I feel that recently there’s been a huge push (what with the interwebs being so easily accessible and such) for exotic foods to move from their far-off, distant places of origin into the kitchens of suburban housewives. While I applaud the cultural diversity intentions (forgetting, for a moment, the elitist one-upsmanship that I suspect underlies these intentions), there is a certain unrest I feel at the idea of my favorite and beloved Spanish traditional dish being bastardized to be made “quick ‘n easy”. Indeed, the fundamental ingredients in paella are rice, saffron, and a portly Spanish woman yelling in Castellano at the child/ husband/ dog to stop picking at the veggies she’s just chopped up for the dish.

So I bestow upon you the recipe for paella that I learned in Valencia (where the shit was invented, for chrissake). Good luck, but even if you make the whole thing flawlessly, it won’t taste right unless it’s consumed in the traditional fashion, too.

Paella Valenciana

Ingredients:

- 3-5 cloves garlic diced, but hang on to the rest of the root because it’s likely you’ll throw some whole cloves in later on

- Olive oil. Lots.

- Rice. Lots

- Tomatoes. Lots

- Veggies

o Peppers of every color, but none that have any kind of heat spice.

o Peas are good if they’re not in the pod

o Maybe some more tomatoes, diced

o Onions

o Yeah you can put those carrots in there if you have to

o Oooh, mushrooms!

- Meat:

o ½ a chicken, chopped by the butcher into cubes that include all the bones – picking it off is the best part!

o ¼ of a rabbit, similarly prepared

o Snails, raw, in the shell

o Oysters, raw, in the shell

o Shrimp, not cleaned, peeled or deveined.

o Cubes of horse meat if you’re feeling adventurous/ you can find it

- Chicken broth and water. Plenty.

- Saffron

- Salt

- Pepper

- Lemons. Lots.

So you need a really big pan that’s about 4 or 5 inches deep and no smaller than Snoop Dog’s hub caps. You’re gonna throw that thing over an open-fire grill and put a bunch of olive in it (to coat the entire bottom with a bit of room to get slippery) and wait for it to get nice and poppin’. While that’s going, grate the tomatoes (probably like 6-8 of them). Yes, you heard correctly. I suppose you could use a blender, but then it would lose that peeled-skin-from-your-fingers flavor. Once the oil is warm, throw in the grated tomato and diced garlic with a dash (or six) of salt and fry it until it looks like ketchup and smells like heaven.

Now you need to cook your meats. If your mother taught you correctly, you know that some meats cook faster than others. I recommend that the horse goes in first, followed by the chicken and rabbit. Then comes the oysters. Wait until after the veggies go in to add the oysters and shrimp, otherwise they’ll get all rubbery and the niños will throw them at each other.

Add your veggies and let them sauté in all the meat fat, soaking up the flavor. Yummm….

Now it’s rice time. Pour the rice over everything. You’ll know how much to use if you make a cross over the food. Plus it will probably make Jesus happy (bonus). Mix it all around, let the rice soak up all the lovely juices and get a little roasting from the pan. Then add all the chicken broth and bring the whole concoction to a boil. Now is when you add the whole cloves of garlic, the extra diced tomatoes, the saffron, and any pepper you want. Almost done!

The pan will boil down and the rice will fluff up over the next 30-40 minutes. Don’t stir it. Did you hear me? Stop stirring it. You’re not supposed to do that. If the rice isn’t soft and the chicken broth has evaporated out/ soaked up, add more water and keep it going. When the rice is soft and the juices are low-ish, remove it and let it “rest” and finish soaking up the rest of the juices. If you’re hard core traditional, you’ll throw it back on the fire for about 5 minutes to burn the bottom. Yes, burn the bottom, intentionally. Why? Because it’s the best freaking part.

Once it’s all done, you put the whole pan in the middle of a park bench, hand out spoons to everyone, they’ll all crowd around and squeeze lemons onto the part in front of them, then they dig in quite literally family-style. BTW this serves 18-20 people.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You say, Hey crazy word-lover, your go-to dish when you fancy a boy is a paella, but that seems excessive for a quiet dinner for two, no? The answer is that I have yet to find horsemeat or snails here in America, and I usually make it on a stovetop with chicken that has no bones and shrimps that have been cleaned. But that’s because I’m making it for an American who would not likely appreciate the subtlety of the flavor that comes from a father re-telling his kid for the two-thousandth time how important it is to make the cross-of-rice.

If all that seems to much for you, and you live in the greater New York City area (I’m looking at you, Solly), then you can just go here. Date soon, m’love?