Paella Party

Ann had wanted me to make a paella for her 60th birthday, but we just could not get large enough group together for such an event at that time. We instead went to Walla Walla wine country to celebrate her birthday and postponed the paella party until the end of October. My large paellera makes enough rice to feed a good 16 people, so it's overkill to make a paella for a small group. Besides, more people is more fun.

Paella Mixta

At its heart, paella is very simple: short-grained rice cooked in broth in a wide, open pan. And thus it depends primarily on two things: the quality of the rice and the quality of the stock used in cooking that rice. I started the day before in making a couple gallons of stock in our big stock pot. For paella, I make stock that complements the garnishes in the paella. So, for example, if I am making a traditional Valencian rabbit paella, I would use rabbit stock. In this case, I wanted to make a paella mixta with chicken, chorizo, and shrimp, so I made a mixed stock.

Starting the Stock; Eight Hours Yet to Cook

In my restaurant days, we would have lots of things laying around for making stock (and sometimes purposefully intended for stock). At home, I start by raiding my freezer in which I collect various bits intended for later use. In this case, I found a whole pork upper shank that I had been saving as well as a bag of trim from frenching a pork rack. Whenever I french a rack by totally denuding the rib bones for presentation purposes, the trim either ends up ground for sausage or other charcuterie or it ends up in the stock pot.

To the pork hock and the rib trim, I added a bunch of pork neck bones, sliced pig's feet, chicken wing tips (from prepping the chicken wings for the paella), shrimp shells (from prepping the shrimp for the paella), a bundle of parsley stems, carrots, celery, saffron, and garlic cloves and peels. Then I added a quart each of chicken stock and clam juice and topped the pot off with water and onto the stove it went to gently simmer for about eight hours, until the giant pork hock was fully cook and fall-apart tender.

When the stock was done, I separated the solids from the broth, mainly in an effort to get the stock as cool as possible as quickly as possible. Nobody wants a foodborne illness from warm stock sitting around growing bacteria. I lightly salted the stock before putting it away. When making paella, I find it easier to control the salt by pre-salting the stock lightly (it will reduce and concentrate the salt) than by trying to guess how much salt to add to the paellera.

At the point when I could bear to put my hands on the hot solids, I picked and reserved all the useable meat. Truth be told, I made more stock than I needed to have leftovers for a great pot of soup, which I did in fact make later in the weekend using the leftover pork meat. You can almost never have too much stock on hand and if you do, you can always cook it down to glace or demiglace and freeze it.

Appetizers: Meatballs in Romesco, Marcona Almonds, and Olives

Despite there being enough paella to feed a small army, Ann and I thought that we should provide some appetizers for our guests that they could munch while I was outside on the patio cooking. The morning of the paella, I made a batch of pork meatballs (pork, parsley, garlic, oregano, basil, and red wine) and that afternoon, I braised them in a big batch of romesco (roasted red peppers, garlic, almonds, white bread, sherry vinegar, and olive oil). These we set out with Marcona almonds (the best!) and some green olives. Simple, but tasty.

Paella Mise en Place from lower left: Vegetables (Piquillos, Onion, Poblano),
Rice, Olive Oil, Chicken Wings, Lima Beans, Shrimp, Salt, Diced Hard Chorizo,
Mix of Parsley/Garlic, and Mix of Pimentón/Saffron

Just before our guests arrived, I lit the fire outside and put out my mise en place for the paella with no fear of lack of refrigeration: it was only about 40 degrees outside and the sun was sinking fast. It would be in the low 20s by morning. The ingredients that I use in my paella vary each time and are certainly non-traditional. I started by learning how to make traditional paella valenciana and now I make my own to suit my mood. I feel lucky not to be bound by the strictures of custom and family pressure to make paella just so.

Preheating the Paellera

Everyone who saw my steel paellera (I love this 55cm Pata Negra from Garcima in Spain) heating on the fire pit on our patio mentioned how perfectly the pan fit on the fire pit. Actually, it was the other way around. I have never cooked a paella on gas before, always lighting a wood fire in the back yard. In our new home in Bend, we have no back yard or really any yard (a plus for travelling), just a patio in the courtyard of our house. And lighting a real fire on our patio wouldn't be all that awesome: we get enough smoke in the house during wildfire season. So, we actually measured the tripod on which the paellera stands and bought a round fire pit that would accommodate it. How is that for planning?

I'm going to say now that I did not make my best paella over the gas. I need more practice to get the perfect soccarat, the crust on the bottom, which I scorched a bit this time. Counterintuitively, I feel like I had better control using a wood fire that I could adjust by moving wood in or out as necessary. I will say that the wind guard around the fire pit really helped with a more even flame. Although I did have to rotate the paellera a bit during cooking, I didn't have to be constantly fiddling with it as I have in the past over a wood fire with an uncontrolled breeze.

Step 1: Brown the Chicken Wings

Steps 2 and 3: Sauté the Vegetables, Then Add the
Pimentón, Saffron, Garlic, and Parsley

Step 4: Add the Stock and Bring to a Mild Boil

Step 5: Add the Rice

Step 6: Add the Shrimp and Lima Beans

Here, you see the cooking paella with all its garnishes (notice how low the flame is now compared to the previous photos), the last to go on the dish are the garnishes that take the least amount of time to cook, the shrimp and the butterbeans/lima beans. The beans are a nod to traditional paella valenciana to which many would add a white bean called the garrofó, or another white bean, or even flat green beans that resemble our romano beans. I'm pretty sure that a traditionalist would cast an evil eye upon these alien beans while silently acknowledging that they taste pretty good in a paella.

Artsy Shot: Flames Glowing Beneath the Paellera

It was well and truly dark by the time the paella finished, at which point, we all migrated into the kitchen where I covered the paella with a towel and let it rest for ten minutes before serving. All eight of us (Ann and I, Rob and Dyce, Andreas and Michelle, and Mark and Kelly) gathered around the big island in the kitchen and dug in to the appetizers and the paella, with lots of red wine poured all around. To finish off the evening's meal, Rob made a delicious apple and green chile pie, with green chiles from Socorro NM that they purchased on their last trip to Santa Fe where they used to live prior to moving to Bend a year ago.

Rob Made This Outstanding New Mexican Apple-Green Chile Pie
Served with Vanilla Ice Cream

We had a great time. I only wish that I hadn't been so busy cooking because I would have liked to have been a bit more present with our guests and to have had the presence of mind to have taken people photographs. This post seems way more clinical than I had wanted for lack of photos of the socializing that took place all evening. Now that the paella is out of the way and it's too dark too early to make a paella until next spring, I'll revert to dishes that do not take active cooking so that I can relax and socialize.

White Rocks/Opa Overlook

In our ongoing weekly exploration of the Great North Mountain area of the George Washington National Forest along the Virginia and West Virginia border, we bring you White Rocks/Opa Overlook. With hunting season fast approaching, we won't be making too many more trips to GWNF until the season closes, so we're making the most of it now before we move over to land where hunting is not allowed.

Hiking Little Sluice Mountain

It was 6am and Ann asked me, "Should we just get up and have coffee?" Knowing how warm it was beneath the covers curled up next to her and seeing that it was still black out, I said, "The dogs aren't even up yet," the unspoken implication being that the dogs rarely cut us any slack in the morning, beginning to bounce off the walls by 6:15, and that we should enjoy the rare ruckus-free quite time.

We half-dozed until the canine circus got into full swing and I finally got up at 6:45 to take them out. Before I left the bedroom and based on the chill in the room, I threw on three layers anticipating the cold outside. Outside, walking on the heavy frost, I pulled my hood up over my ears. In January, I'm sure that 27 degrees will feel pretty warm, but right now, it's the coldest morning so far of the fall. I struggled with pants or shorts as I always do this time of year. Pants won out, but by 11am, I was wishing for shorts. It's a no win situation this time of year.

On autopilot, half asleep and half exhausted from working 90 hours last week, I made some weak-ass coffee. I don't know how but I measured the beans wrong. After coffee, we got saddled up and on the road by 8am. There's no point in going out screaming early this time of year: it's good to wait for a little sunlight. Those mountain coves stay pretty cold in the morning.

You can approach this area from either Virginia or West Virginia, given that it straddles the border. Today's hike took us out Waite's Run Road out of Wardensville on the WV side to where Cove Run empties into Waite's Run. Our hike took us up Cove Run to the ridgeline of Little Sluice, back north along the ridgeline, and back down to the car.

This was a tough trailhead to find. Well, actually not. We found it just fine. It's just that there wasn't any signage or evidence on the ground that we were at the right place and here up at the tail end of the dirt Waites Run Road is pretty much the boonies with nobody to ask. Unsure of exactly where we were but thinking we were in the correct place (no sign saying "You are here!"), we kept going and finally saw the well-marked Old Mailpath trail as it crossed the road. We turned around and parked, the only car there probably all day. We met no other hikers all day and saw no other vehicles. Win for us!

Right on the Border; We Walked the Border

Unusual: We Started in a White Pine Forest

Our hike started in a white pine forest with a few small hemlocks here and there, pretty unusual trees for around here. As we worked our way uphill along Cove Run and crossing it several times, there was a lot of mud on the trail. Fortunately, it was mostly frozen. Ann borrowed my gloves; it was that cold up under the trees. I was wishing for a pair myself.

Very Chilly Start to Our Day

High Tech Footbridge on Cove Run

Once we had climbed a bit higher on Little Sluice Mountain, we joined the orange-blazed Racer Camp Hollow Trail which paralleled the creek. We weaved in and out of the woods. The number of fields tells me that this area is actively managed for wildlife; they have to be bushhogging the fields each year to keep them from overgrowing.

Walking Through a Wildlife Field; Mill Mountain Ahead

We finally started to climb up and out of the creek bottom to meet the intersection with the blue-blazed Tuscarora Trail, not very far at all from the PATC's Sugar Knob Cabin which we visited on our tour of Mill Mountain and Big Schloss a few weeks back. On our climb out of the creek valley, we came upon a spring green area carpeted in moss and ferns, a dramatic change from the brown stands of frost-killed bracken fern we had seen all morning.

So Green it Looked Like Spring

We took the Tuscarora north up onto the ridgeline of Little Sluice, ultimately over the peak and descending to a short trail branching east to our lunch destination, Opa Overlook. As we climbed out of West Virginia up onto the border, the trees really changed to open stands of stunted oaks undergrown with mountain laurel. We saw one big buck up in this area and several downy woodpeckers.

On The Ridge: Stunted Oak Forest

Crossing the peak and starting down the north side of the mountain, we came quickly upon twin cairns flanking the start of the Opa Overlook trail. The trail is supposed to be white-blazed, but there are no white blazes to be seen near its intersection with the Tuscarora. Still, you'd have to be blind to miss it.

Cairn Marking Overlook Trail

Working our way out to the knob where we were to have lunch, we were suddenly confronted with a minor rock scramble. Once up top, I could see that the view was going to be great, but I was unprepared for the "Oh, wow!" moment I would have once I bent around to the left and climbed up just a bit more.

Stunning Panorama from Opa Overlook

The view up top was awesome, looking out at Tea and Little North Mountains with Sheffer Gap between. From Opa Overlook, we were able to see the Blue Ridge/SNP in the distance behind both arms/ridges of the Massanuttens, and of course, the Great North Mountain complex in the foreground. We could see some of the taller peaks of the South District of SNP beyond the southern end of Massanutten Mountain. If you click on the picture below to expand it and look carefully, especially up under the branches of the pine tree, you can see distinct ridgelines for the Blue Ridge and both Massanuttens.

Sheffer Gap; Tea Mountain to Left

As we ate lunch in the warm sunshine taking in these breathtaking views, a raven kept us entertained with its half-frog, half-crow call as it glided by on the air currents. At this point, we had both rolled up our pants and Ann was down to a T-shirt, a far cry from gloves and lots of layers in the morning.

Annie Takes in Little North Mountain and Beyond

Channeling Kate Winslet

Short Sleeves and Rolled-up Pants

From here, it was downhill all the way along the Tuscarora to the pink-blazed Old Mailpath Trail and back down the hill to the car. The good news in approaching Great North Mountain from the Wardensville side is that once you come off the mountain, Lost River Brewing is just minutes away! We took up two seats at the end of the bar and watched the tail end of the Redskins game while chatting away with the other hikers also camped out with us.

Post Hike Reward

Chicharrones: Dangerous, Dangerous Bar Snacks

Nachos: Not Super Awesome

Really Great Wings

Burgers and Onion Rings are Very Good Here

We ended up bringing most of the burger and half the nachos back to the eating machine, who hauled them off to his room, not to be seen again. Lost River Brewing's food has proven to be pretty decent with the exception of their nachos which featured cheap chips, cheap cheese sauce, and canned black olives. We like heartier chips, real cheese, and a good bit more spice. Alas, we can't have everything, can we?

Halfmoon Mountain/Lost River Brewing

Not only could we see Signal Knob and the rest of the Massanuttens extremely well from I-81 near Stephens City, we could see the shadows outlining each fold and protrustion in the earth and as we got closer, we could see individual trees. That's a clear day, thanks to the cold front that blew through on Saturday. Fortunately, the 20-40mph wind gusts accompanying that front had calmed to 10-20mph gusts on Sunday, leaving us with absolutely perfect hiking weather, starting in the upper-40s and climbing to just over 60.

We headed west on 55/US 48 from Strasburg skirting around the north end of Little North Mountain and crossing Great North Mountain and the Tuscarora Trail before dropping down into the Lost River Valley and Wardensville, WV. At the end of the main drag, just after Lost River Brewing, we turned left onto Trout Run Rd and headed to the well-marked Bucktail Trail parking area about six miles up on the left. This is as easy a trailhead to find as they come.

Coincidentally, Trout Run Rd runs back south and east through Wolf Gap into Shenandoah County, VA where it becomes 675, Wolf Gap Rd, the road we were on last weekend when hiking Big Schloss just over the border in Virginia.

We arrived at the trailhead about 9:45am, it being just slightly less than an hour drive from home, and were perhaps the twelfth car there. Nonetheless, we got a space right next to the gate and we did not see many of those people on the trail. I am guessing that a lot of the cars belonged to overnighters who made a two-day trek of the trail.

It was quite by accident that we got to Halfmoon Mountain on Sunday. Ann was looking at hikes and thought that she had sent me a link to one on the AT that she wanted to do, but ended up cutting and pasting the wrong link, the one to Halfmoon. I liked it so much that I asked if we could do it rather than the out and back hike on the AT. I'd like to get as many hikes in the George Washington National Forest as possible before deer season opens November 21.

Speaking of the GWNF, we really love hiking there as opposed to Shenandoah National Park which sees so many tourists and where the trails can be crowded. Sunday, we saw six hikers all day on our loop which started from the Bucktail parking lot and heading north to the bridge over Halfmoon Run where the Capon Trail starts. From there we headed east up the creek, picked up the Old Mine Trail forest road for a little bit, then climbed the steep German Wilson Trail to the saddle where we turned west and climbed to the summit of Halfmoon Mountain. Back down from there to the yellow-blazed Halfmoon Trail, at this point less than a mile from where we were hiking the Mill Mountain Trail last weekend, to the pink-blazed Bucktail Cutoff Trail and back to the car for a circuit of about 10.6 miles in about five hours.

We Made the Circuit of Halfmoon Mountain

As I lamented last weekend, there just isn't much color this year, likely due to the drought in August. From up top, scanning over the mountainsides, you can see sugar maples here and there starting to go red, but the color is not glorious this year. It looks like a year where everything just goes brown and drops, probably on the first rainy day in November. We did happen upon one hickory tree going golden and bathed in sunlight, glowing for all the world to see.

Lone Hickory Turning Yellow

The first part of the trail heading north was on fire road and we made very good time (for us) covering 3.5 miles in 90 minutes. Once we hit the bridge over Halfmoon Run, the trail started following the creek east up the hill and footing was a lot more iffy, with a lot of loose rock under the leaves. We crossed the creek several times before climbing up and away from it to meet a wide forest road. At times, it was anyone's guess which side of the creek the actual trail was located on, but there was no doubt that we just needed to follow the creek up the mountain.

To Make the Loop, Don't Cross This Bridge

From the wide and open forest road, I nearly missed the turn off to the left for the purple-blazed German Wilson trail. The photographer in me constantly scans the sides of the trail for interesting things to photograph and so things that don't belong stick out to me. I happened to see something rectangular, very much like a sign, up in the bushes on the left. It happened to be the trail sign for the German Wilson trail. I can see that many people would miss this. Be careful.

Upon leaving the fire road, the German Wilson trail became immediately steep and then turned right following a gully between two hills, a dry creek bed. Footing was iffy and my hiking poles came in quite useful in seeking out safe places to step in the deep leaves. This trail was also not well maintained or well marked. The photo below shows what you are dealing with for faint blazes.

Blazes are Tough to Spot at Times

Red Leaf on Mountain Laurel

The German Wilson trail, though steep, is short and ends in a saddle where it joins the white-blazed trail to the summit of Halfmoon Mountain which is also a short walk from the intersection. Just at the end, it becomes a bit more rocky and more vertical. As you go up, there are more and more views, mainly to the east looking out at Mill Mountain. At the summit, there is the ruined foundation of an old tower.

Rocks Just Before Summit

Looking East at Mill Mountain

The views at the top are mainly to the south and if you keep pushing past the summit, through the little two-tent camping area in the swale below the tower, and just a bit further west, there is another larger rock outcrop that has fantastic views to the south and west. From the first outcropping just below the abandoned tower, you can see the peaks of Great North Mountain as they stretch away to the south to and beyond Wolf Gap.

And South at Big Schloss, Wolf Gap, and Tibbet's Knob

Annie Checking out Derelict Tower

The second outcropping gives great views of Trout Run Valley running down to Wolf Gap, framed by Great North Mountain to the east and Long Mountain to the west. Despite the gusty breeze, we took our lunch here at this outcropping and marveled at how beautiful this place is. Even in full sun, we had to pull on an extra layer because of the wind. We had the run of the place while we were up there eating our lunch, wraps of hummus, Canadian bacon, salami, tapenade, and arugula. We last saw a couple who spent the night up top an hour before and we wouldn't see anyone else until we met a threesome of young ladies a mile down the hill, 90 minutes later. That is great solitude.

Trout Run Valley, Long Mountain to Right

Big Schloss Behind Ann

Coming down off the mountain was a long schlep and in places, my knees were bothering me from the constant downhill. Other than that, it was a fairly uneventful 90-minute walk back to the car. I did notice that the intersection of the yellow- and pink-blazed trails could have been very tricky to find (that is, you could have walked past the head of the pink trail without even noticing it). And once on the pink trail, we did have a couple of moments of "Now, where is that trail?" in the deep leaves.

There was also one turn in the pink blazed trail as it joined an old wagon road for a brief time that could have been really hard to notice had we been going the opposite direction. The temptation would have been to continue straight up the mountain on the wagon trail and totally miss the poorly blazed turn-off. We finally arrived back on the orange-blazed fire road on which we started. We missed seeing the pink-blazed trail take leave of the fire road as we hiked out in the morning. About 20 paces back down the fire road, I turned around to try to understand why I missed the turn-off. At 20 paces, the pink-blazed trail was unrecognizable.

All this is by way of saying that these less popular trails are less well marked and you need to have your wits about you. A map helps too and you should always have a compass. Know how to use them too. It would be nearly impossible to get lost here though, with the mountain to your back in the east, you are in an area bordered by Deep Gutter Run (issuing from Sandstone Spring on the Mill Mountain Trail) to the south, Halfmoon Run to the north, and Trout Run (road and creek) to the west.

No good hike should be without its just reward and so we stopped in Wardensville at Lost River Brewing. Our last visit here was in 2012, though to be fair, we did try to stop on the way back from our Labor Day excursion to Blackwater Falls, but they were closed. We grabbed the two stools at the bar closest to the front door and after a long wait on our unhurried/lackadaisical barkeep, I got a Pale Ale and Ann got a Shocktop. The Pale Ale was decent enough: not the best, not the worst, but fresh and drinkable.

Lost River, Decent Pale Ale

Our bartender wasn't too concerned about doing her job. It took some doing to order some food and another beer. The restaurant was somewhat busy, but despite that, the kitchen was really, really slow. Not sure if they are understaffed or staffed with cooks who also run about 35mph in a 60mph zone, just like the bartender. The appetizers Ann ordered were done well. The wings were excellent as were the fries. The fries were desperate for some seasoning, however. After our apps took 35 minutes to come out, I went ahead and put our burger order in so that we wouldn't be sitting there all night.

Really Good Wings

Salt and Vinegar Fries (Absent Salt and Vinegar)

After waiting for 45 minutes, Ann finally asked the bartender to see if she could find our burgers in the kitchen. This was a new bartender; apparently the shift changed at 4:30. She said, "Didn't she [the previous bartender] tell you that our burgers take 30-40 minutes to cook?" Being in the business, my bullshit detector hit high alert, but before I could say anything, Ann pretty much cut off her line of bullshit by saying that rare burgers don't take any time to cook and would she go check on them. She came out about five minutes later bearing burgers, well cooked and tasty. The onion rings were great as well. The food was worth the wait.

A Very Good Burger; Nice Onion Rings Too

We returned back to Winchester via 259, Carper's Pike, which runs down the VA-WV border for a while, and US 50, just for a change of pace, touring scenic (said tongue in cheek) Yellow Spring and High View, WV. We arrived home just before dark. It was a great day and I recommend both the hike and the brewery.

Dogfish Head AleHouse, Chantilly VA

Sunday September 11, Ann and I were going to reprise our hike of Whiteoak Canyon, but her plantar fasciitis acted up again. We had been saving a trip in to REI Fairfax to try out some new gear for a rainy day and her lame foot provided that proverbial rainy day, so after a leisurely pot of coffee, we headed in to Fairfax.

As we drove to REI, I found it very eerily coincident that we drove directly by the building where I was hunkered down with dozens of others in the first floor gym, glued to the television, fifteen years earlier as we watched in absolute horror the second airliner plowing into the Twin Towers. I hadn't been by this building in 15 years, yet the memories are still intensely vivid.

Although we got a new backpack for Ann, the trip in to REI for my part was a bust. I wanted to look into some clothing, but they had nothing in my size. We were done shopping right around 12:30 and neither of us having eaten breakfast, were pretty famished. I had picked out a promising Chinese restaurant nearby for lunch, but that was going over not at all with my lovely spouse who kept saying the word "margarita" over and over.

Consulting the Garmin and going through the list of nearby restaurants, Ann chose the Greenbrier Dogfish Head AleHouse and so off we headed up to route 50 and west towards Chantilly. It was such a gorgeous day that we sat outside on the patio which quickly filled up with football fans looking to watch the games on the huge flatscreens and drink a beer or two.

Photobombing the Dogfish Head Sign

Ann started with a Namaste, a Belgian-style Wit that she had liked previously on tap at PaveMint. She didn't like this one as much and subsequently switched a big-girl mug of Festina, a Berliner-style Weiss flavored with peaches. I started with a big mug of 60-Minute IPA, a very known quantity to me. None of the other beers on tap seem to do it for me. Dogfish can be a little nutty when it comes to beer.

60-Minute IPA

I let Ann pick the food and soon arrived at the table a plate of fried calamari, andouille Cajun egg rolls, pork belly tacos, and some chicken wings. All the food was better than I expected. The calamari was well fried but really needed some salt. The egg rolls were kind of blah, seasoning-wise, with no apparent andouille. It's a really good bar food idea that just didn't approach in execution what it could have been. The pork belly tacos, by contrast, were fabulous. The server told Ann that the wings were indeed meaty in response to her query, but clearly we have different ideas about meaty. They were scrawny, grilled, and mostly left uneaten.

Calamari, Andouille Cajun Egg Rolls, Pork Belly Tacos

"Meaty" Wings

We enjoyed a nice leisurely drive back out route 50 to home past Dulles. It's a road I haven't taken in 15 years and I was shocked at the development and all the changes. I was kind of dumbfounded at the three roundabouts at Gilbert's Corner replacing the single traffic light. It seems pretty damned stupid to me, but then what do I know?