One of my hobbies, avocations you might say, is cooking. I love to cook good food. Cooking not only nourishes the body, it nourishes the soul with a certain amount of peace, as one attempts to excel at something.
Today I attempted for the first time to make a Seafood Paella, following the instructions to the letter. Whether the result was successful depends on the taste buds of those eating this meal and their familiarity with this dish - in this case basically none - since I have only enjoyed the dish twice, once in Barcelona in the mid 1960's, and once in the late 1980's right here in Houston at a Spanish restaurant, since then closed, in the company of Capt. Lorenzo di Casa Grande of Costa Line (yes the line with the famous ship that ran aground a year ago - the Costa Concordia), his lovely wife, Capt. Adriaan Van de Voorde, his wife, my wife and yours truly.
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This is not a picture of my dish, but of a dish that I found on line googling Paella.
One supposes this is what Paella should look like. |
First one had to gather all the ingredients, which is not as easy as it would appear at first glance;
shrimp, clams, mussels, squid (calamari) which I didn't find, scallops, clam juice and saffron. It took two stores to come up with all the stuff needed.
As for the preparations it was rather easy, but time consuming, having to be done in a particular order.
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Two pans are ready, one with water for the broth, the other for sauteing the onions, garlic and such.
Note the glass of wine required in the cooks contract. |
The recipe for 4 calls for 1/2 onion to be grated.
Watch fingertips when grating the onion, in this case on the largest holes in the grater.
A Spanish dish must have a lot of garlic, which by the way is really good against
high levels of unhealthy cholesterol, so it is a good cardiovascular ingredient,
if used often (daily).
It would appear that Saffron is a critical ingredient in this dish and
the recipe calls for a rather large amount, which in and of itself is not a problem,
but the price of this stuff really is, I found a minuscule amount at
$458.00 per ounce (about 30 grams = US $15.26 per gram ) at our local grocery store. I will no longer think that
Starbucks coffee or gasonline (petrol) is over prized.
Clams have been added to the broth which is salted water and one bottle of clam juice.
In the meantime, the most expensive Saffron stems are toasting (do not burn).
After toasting the Saffron stems are ground up in a good old fashioned stone molcajete.
In the meantime it looks like the cook needs a refill of wine. Help him out here.
Hot oil is prepared and the shrimp, scallops and the in this case smelts are added together
with cilantro from my vegetable garden to saute. The cook is having a sip of wine.
The shrimp, scallops and smelts are "reserved", which is a fancy way
of saying set aside for later and the onion, garlic, tomatoes and in this case
red bell pepper is added to the oil.
Uncooked rice is added to the mixture, in this case 1 1/2 cups.
The broth is added to the rice, onion, etc. mixture to cook slowly.
Mussels and clams are added to simmer in the mixture.
Then we add the shrimp, shallots, smelt and cilantro.
Somebody get the cook some more wine, the glass is half empty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is the Paella ready to serve. Come and get it!
Buen Provecho - Bon Apetit - Velbekomme
Mahlzeit - Buen Apetito - Vaelgagnist - Smaklig Maaltid -
etc.
The Paella is served with lots of lemon wedges to squeeze lemon juice over the mixture and with garlic bread. Of course, a glass of good Spanish wine is a must for this dish.
So the question remains; was it good? That is of course a matter of taste, I think it was great for a first attempt, others thought it was a bit fishy (what do you expect from seafood), so perhaps next time one will not use the smelt which obviously adds a fishy taste.
