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.

Paella

Ann has been talking about me cooking a paella for months. Our last experience in doing paella at the beginning of October was that the weather was brutally hot, so she scheduled it this fall for the end of the month. Naturally, it was the hottest day we have had in a month, topping out at 83 degrees and somewhat uncomfortable in the sun. Fortunately, the gusty winds out of the south made it somewhat bearable.

The Guest of Honor

Once guests started arriving, we could see the telltale darkness on the horizon out west and several of us started looking at the radar to see how bad and how soon the rain would be. How soon? A lot sooner than the predicted 6:30. How bad? Some gusty wind and a bit of rain, not enough to send us inside, the wisteria vines on the arbor giving us enough cover.

Searing the Chicken and Chorizo; Look at the Wind!

Sofrito Cooked, Stock Coming to Boil

Rice About Half Done, Adding Mussels

Mussels Just Open, Shrimp in, Max Flame for Soccarat

With all the wind, I couldn't get the paella done as quickly as usual; the heat was blown off the pan. Such is cooking outdoors over a fire. Of the hundreds of frames I shot, these are all the photos worth looking at and many of these are pretty terrible. I'm afraid I'm not very good with the camera. I was trying to use my 50mm prime lens and I still don't have it figured out. I need to find another strategy for shooting handheld interior shots in low light without resorting to flash. (The little voice is saying, "use the iPhone, idiot!").

Anniversary Paella

In the restaurant business, we celebrate our personal milestones on days off. Work days are for helping others celebrate their milestones. I wish it weren't so, but it is the nature of my occupation. This past Sunday was the day closest to our actual anniversary and to celebrate we invited a dozen or fourteen friends over for tapas, paella, and a case of Tempranillo, which our friends, who are not shy about wine, promptly emptied!



Paella Mixta

We really had a beautiful day and I kicked the hardwood fire off about ten minutes to four in the fire pit out on our patio. At 4:30, I started the chicken, which was followed by the chorizos, the tiny Salvadoran ones called tuzas (gophers), and my mirepoix of red peppers, onions, and hard Spanish chorizo. After this, into the pan with a spoonful of pimentón and my picada (parsley and garlic). Then a gallon of mixed stock (chicken, pork, mussel, and saffron), right up to the bottom of the handle rivets.

Once the stock came to a boil, a kilo and a half of rice went into the pan at 5:00 and was done by 5:25 or so. After 15 minutes of resting under a couple of towels, we all dug in, scraping big hunks of the crunchy socarrat off the bottom of the paellera.

Rear to Front: Chicken Wings, Salvadoran Chorizos, Red Prawns, Mussels

I thought I had lucked out and got some amazing red prawns. They sure look good, but their texture was pasty and the flavor very fishy. Not again for me. They are a new product that I was checking out for my seafood company. No bueno.



Figs, Goat Cheese, Jamón

For starters for our guests while I was out back tending the fire and the paellera, I made two tapas: these halved figs topped with local goat cheese and wrapped in ham. And I threw together some sautéed onions and red peppers from the garden with some thyme and eggs for a tortilla. Finally, as Spaniards will often do for a quick tapa, we raided the pantry for some marinated olives, peppers, and lupini.

Mixed Olives, Peppers, and Lupini



Red Pepper and Onion Tortilla

For wine, I picked a really smooth Tinta de Toro crianza from Finca Sobreño. It's a ripe Tempranillo that tastes of darker fruit, blackberries and cassis, without a lot of aggressive wood and with tame tannins. A great party wine.

A Nice Tempranillo (Tinta de Toro)

Arroz con Cosas

Donald Made a Diva Cake

The big 50!

We celebrated Ann's 50th with a lot of friends and family on Sunday and I was so wrapped up in having a good time that I forgot to shoot many pictures. I did get a picture of the awesome diva cake that Donald made for Ann, chocolate cake under the pink skirt and raspberry and white chocolate for the base.

For a fall day, it sure was unseasonably warm outside, especially when coupled with a roaring fire. Because of the 90-plus degree heat, Ann stayed inside in the air conditioning and so missed the making of the paella. So this post is for her and hopefully answers her question, "How did you make the paella?"

Speaking of paella, I may as well go ahead and call my concoction by the somewhat derogatory term arroz con cosas as a pre-emptive strike against those Valencians who insist that true paella can only be made in a single way. The paella snobs sniff almost sotto voce, "That's not paella, it's arroz con cosas (rice with things)." Sorry guys, this is my yard, my party, and my freaking paella. Thanks for the idea, but like The Chairman said, "I did it my way!"

Chicken Wings and Salvadoran Chorizos

This was my first attempt at making paella outdoors over a fire. Sure, I have made paellas aplenty in hotel pans at the restaurant, but there is something really awesome about heating up a really beautiful paellera over a wood fire. And this super-thick Pata Negra paellera from La Tienda in Williamsburg is a thing of beauty. I love this mild steel pan in the same way that I love our black steel sauté pans at the restaurant. It takes a lot of maintenance to keep it from rusting, but it is so responsive and a joy to cook in.

While it was my first attempt at paella over a fire, I am no stranger to cooking over a fire, having done it quite a lot in the days of my misspent youth. Armed with a big stack of dogwood and cherry wood from the field behind us, it took almost no time to get a nice blaze going, especially after the last couple of months without rain.

Then Onions, Red Peppers, and Hard Spanish Chorizo

Because the cooking action is so quick in making a paella, you need to have everything prepped in advance. In the days before the party, I made a couple gallons of pretty saffron-yellow stock from pork necks, pig's feet, chicken feet, vegetables, saffron, and mussels. I like to add the saffron to the stock to get even distribution in the rice. And after straining the stock, I salted it to taste. When cooking a paella, it is sometimes hard to get the right amount of salt: salting the stock helps with that. Not too much salt, mind you, because the stock does evaporate in cooking and will concentrate the salt.

I also diced red peppers, yellow onions, green onions, and a small hard chorizo on Saturday and had them waiting in containers, ready to go in the pan to make my sofrito. In the photo above, you see that I have moved the meat to the outside of the pan and am frying the sofrito in the center. Once the vegetables started to soften, I added two huge scoops of minced garlic and Italian parsley and let it cook with a couple tablespoons of pimentón before adding heated stock to the pan.

Stock is Boiling Gently; Rice Always in Sign of the Cross

How much stock, I'm not sure, though I started with a couple of gallons. You see in the photo above that I filled the pan to the bottom of the handle rivet. And the rice, now I know for sure that my 55cm (more than half a meter! that's a good-sized pan!) paella pan takes a kilo and a half of rice. Tony and I just eyeballed it and judged it just right at one-and-a-half kilo bricks of rice.

Once the rice was in the pan, everything was pretty much on autopilot and all I had to do was mind the flame and rotate the pan now and again to place a different part of the pan over the hot spot. There was no way to avoid a hot spot: a constant gusty breeze kept the leeward side of the pan much warmer than the windward, and that's nothing if not normal when cooking over a fire.

Almost Done! Listening to the Crackle of the Soccarat!

As the rice started to plump, I added artichoke hearts and soon the rice got thick enough to embed the mussels and to support the shrimp on top. At this point, it was just a matter of letting the soccarat—the coveted crisp rice crust that is the sure sign of a well-cooked paella—form on the bottom of the pan as the seafood finished steaming on top of the rice that was in the final stages of just becoming tender.

I started with a big fire when cooking the chicken and vegetables and then let it die down to a simmer while the rice cooked. At the end, I threw more wood to the fire to get it really hot again and spent the last few minutes listening carefully to the pan, listening for the stock to boil off and the soccarat to crackle. This pan rewarded us with the most amazing soccarat ever!

Dig in!

Happy Birthday, Annie! I hope you enjoyed it! And thank you Valencia for one of the greatest party foods ever! Even if it is just rice with things.

Ersatz Paella

What do you make when you want a paella, but don't have all the ingredients you need and are in no mood to go get them? You make fake paella, of course. Or at least I do. This isn't that fake, except I have a big sautoir standing in for a paellera and achiote paste standing in for saffron. The sautoir didn't make too much difference, but the achiote, well, let's just call this arroz amarillo and say that I missed the saffron. The color and flavor are all wrong.

I started by cooking the chorizos in the sautoir and then dredging some chicken wings in pimentón and cooking them most of the way through after removing the chorizos. After removing the chorizos to a platter, I cooked yellow onion, orange bell pepper, and garlic in the pan, then I added the achiote paste and the rice. Once the rice was cooked in the oil, I added some tomatoes and their juice, the chicken, and the chorizos to the pan and added water to just cover.

Aren't these Salvadoran chorizos cute?

About 16 or 17 minutes later, I scattered green onions and mussels on top and turned the flame up high to create a crusty socarrat on the bottom of the pan. A thin paellera would have created a better crust than the big aluminum sautoir.

We started the afternoon with this Ginger Grapefruit Cocktail made with ginger simple syrup, pink grapefruit juice, and Absolut Citron. Ann made the simple syrup by putting two cups of warm simple syrup on about a cup of chopped ginger, blitzing everything in the blender, letting it stand overnight, and straining through a very fine chinois.

Ginger Grapefruit Cocktail

1 1/2 parts ginger syrup
1 1/2 parts Absolut citron
4 parts pink grapefruit juice

Shake with ice and strain; serve up.




Ann seemed to enjoy the cocktails, but they weren't my thing. I'm not a big cocktail or liquor guy. Hey, we can't agree on absolutely everything! So, I opened a bottle of Roessler Pinot Noir "Savoy" Anderson Valley 2006. I find that the only Pinots from California that I really like are those from the Sonoma Coast north like this one from Mendocino. Still, it was too ripe for my liking. Hey California, less ripe, more acid, please! More finesse, guys; less sledgehammer!

Tapas and Paella with Don and Terry

Wow! Wow! Wow!

That's all I have to say after visiting friends Donald and Terry on Sunday: "Wow!"


Ann and Donald with a bottle of Glen Manor Hodder Hill 2009, the wine that just won the Governor's Cup as the best wine in the state. Damn good it is too!

Carter and his mother in one of Carter's calmer moments, a rarity these days.

Check out the tapas spread the guys had awaiting us!


White bread cut-outs with olive oil, cheese, and smoked salt—addictive!

Asparagus frittata. It's pretty cool how the asparagus float in the eggs and separate themselves.

Dates stuffed with Manchego and walnuts.

Olives, walnuts in hickory salt, and Marcona almonds. The olives were my favorite. I can live on olives.

Mushrooms stuffed with corn, chorizo, and cream cheese. Yum!


We started our tapas with the 2009 Amalie Robert Pinot Meunier that I brought and what a neat wine this is! Intense fruit and excellent acidity in such a light-bodied wine. I am not sure that I could tell this from Pinot Noir if tasting blind. And then Terry surprised us by opening a bottle of 2010 Borsao Garnacha "Tres Picos." I know Borsao from the restaurant where we have carried their wines at times over the years. Still I was not prepared for this full-on modern-style prestige Garnacha with its huge fruit and lavish oak regimen. A fun wine for drinking with friends!


After many tapas, much wine, and a lot of catching up, we got around to dinner itself, starting with a fantastic salad of arugula, marinated melon, jamón serrano, and curls of Manchego.

The pièce de résistance was the paella and what cojones Terry has to attempt his first paella ever with a chef in the house! Here is the fabulous concoction both before and after cooking. It was notable for me because Terry used Valencia rice, which I have never had before. I make my paella at the restaurant from either Bomba or Arborio depending on what I have on hand. The tiny little Valencia grains were fantastic.



The guys would never let us leave without an overload of dessert, including a membrillo and pine nut tart, chocolate dipped apricots, strawberries, and grapes.


Just look at this tart! It was as delicious as it looks good.


Naturally, one must have a piece of chocolate for that last swallow of red wine.

And finally, I had to finish with this shot of the grapes just because I like it so much. I guess if you click the shutter long enough, you're bound to take a good photo every once in a while.