Paella Day
On Saturday, Andrew and I headed to Napa for a day of paella-making with Beth and Nate and the babies. We had gotten a paella pan and ingredients for a wedding gift, but hadn’t yet put them to use; paella is definitely something you have to make for more than two people. It was unseasonably warm on Saturday, in the high-70s (by “unseasonably” I mean “unseasonably for the Northeast”), but nonetheless Napa was beautiful, with the vines changing to gold and red, set against a bright-blue sky.
After some debate, Andrew and I decided to adapt a recipe from Penelope Casas’s The Foods & Wines of Spain for our paella. Friday night, we’d watched a video of the NYT’s Mark Bittman cooking a simple tomato paella, and it looked easy enough—it seemed like the kind of dish that, like a soup, you could pretty much just toss anything into. After a trip to the Napa Whole Foods for provisions, we were ready to begin.
In theory and in practice, cooking paella is not that difficult—cook some things in the pan, cook some other things in the pan, combine everything in the pan, pour in some boiling broth, put into oven. Easier than a risotto, with its constant stirring and broth-adding. However, we ran into one big problem: the pan was full to the point of overflowing with rice and broth, and we hadn’t even added the cooked chicken or shrimp—and we’d drastically cut down on what the recipe called for. We opted for shrimp, chicken, and sausage, while the recipe called for a lot more chicken, chorizo, pork, lobster, shrimp, mussels, and clams. I have no idea how all of that could possibly fit into our 15-inch pan, which is what the recipe called for. In any case, after some determined boiling-down, we managed to fit everything in.
The end result was pleasingly paella-y. Next time, we’d add more salt and pimiento and maybe some on-the-bone chicken, to intensify the flavor. But we enjoyed the lunch nonetheless. Beth and Nate made some sangria, and we ate outside in their backyard. We walked to a little chocolate/ice-cream shop for dessert. A late lunch… eating outside…walking someplace…interacting successfully with other human beings…It was a nice day.
After some debate, Andrew and I decided to adapt a recipe from Penelope Casas’s The Foods & Wines of Spain for our paella. Friday night, we’d watched a video of the NYT’s Mark Bittman cooking a simple tomato paella, and it looked easy enough—it seemed like the kind of dish that, like a soup, you could pretty much just toss anything into. After a trip to the Napa Whole Foods for provisions, we were ready to begin.
In theory and in practice, cooking paella is not that difficult—cook some things in the pan, cook some other things in the pan, combine everything in the pan, pour in some boiling broth, put into oven. Easier than a risotto, with its constant stirring and broth-adding. However, we ran into one big problem: the pan was full to the point of overflowing with rice and broth, and we hadn’t even added the cooked chicken or shrimp—and we’d drastically cut down on what the recipe called for. We opted for shrimp, chicken, and sausage, while the recipe called for a lot more chicken, chorizo, pork, lobster, shrimp, mussels, and clams. I have no idea how all of that could possibly fit into our 15-inch pan, which is what the recipe called for. In any case, after some determined boiling-down, we managed to fit everything in.
The end result was pleasingly paella-y. Next time, we’d add more salt and pimiento and maybe some on-the-bone chicken, to intensify the flavor. But we enjoyed the lunch nonetheless. Beth and Nate made some sangria, and we ate outside in their backyard. We walked to a little chocolate/ice-cream shop for dessert. A late lunch… eating outside…walking someplace…interacting successfully with other human beings…It was a nice day.
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