We celebrated the Fourth of July with that traditional American feast -- paella. As my brother quipped, "That and a Bud Light and you're ready to go." I've been wanting to do another paella for a long time and it is truly a festive dish, so we used the excuse of uncertain weather to plan a meal indoors and depart from the usual fare.
Paella, which has more than a dozen ingredients and cooks in 45 minutes, is all about prepping and mise en place. This worked like a charm with the recipe I adapted from Janet Mandel's
My Kitchen in Spain (recipe follows). Prepping involved cutting up the chicken to get 8 pieces from the legs and breasts (wings and back went into the freezer for stock); slicing the meat off the bone of the pork loin chop and cubing it; washing the squid, removing the skin and head and little clear tab, then slicing it into rings; shelling the medium shrimp for cooking in the paella; cleaning and dicing the green pepper; peeling, seeding and chopping the tomatoes; shelling the peas; steaming the mussels; boiling the jumbo whole shrimp for decoration; slicing the pimento for decoration; quartering the lemon for garnish; crushing the saffron and mixing it with pimenton, food coloring and water; thawing out the frozen homemade chicken stock. What fun!
When I started the sofrito, following Mandel's carefully described steps, everything was ready in an assortment of bowls, pots and pitchers, so that after 20-some minutes of sauteeing the meat, vegetables and seafood, I could pour in the stock, bring it to a boil, pour in the rice, dribble in the saffron mix, add the salt and bay leaves, stir and let the chemistry begin. As Mandel says, the important thing is not to stir the rice again and release the gummy stuff that makes a risotto creamy but is not desirable in a paella.
I interrupted the process when the sofrito was done, probably for too long, because the meat came out a little dry, but on the whole it was big success -- a true fiesta. It needed to be a little spicier. Next time I would salt the meat separately as it's cooking, up the pimenton and use fresher saffron (I won't tell you how long I've had the saffron I used). A special hat tip to A&H Gourmet and Seafood Market in Bethesda. The Portuguese owners not only have a great selection of fresh fish (many restaurants buy there), but everything you need for paella. I especially appreciated the abundant squid, so that I could
include the calamari called for in the recipe.
Keeping to the Spanish theme, Andrea made two really great appetizers from Joanne Weir's
From Tapas to Mezes -- a summer vegetable flat bread ("Catalan pizza") with Swiss chard, zucchini, green pepper, and tomato; and a caramelized onion omelette from Andalusia that involved cooking 3 lbs of chopped onion for an hour and a half, which made them incredibly sweet. For dessert, she used Mandel's recipe for caramel flan that was truly light and delicate -- not too eggy or custardy -- just like in Spain; we served fresh berries with that. To drink, a surprisingly
good red wine sangria from Claudia Roden.
RECIPE FOR FIESTA PAELLA
(adapted from Janet Mandel's My Kitchen in Spain)
Mandel's recipe serves 4 to 5, so I increased ingredients by about 50% to serve 6 to 8. I don't have a paella pan but always use a cast iron wok (which she lists as an alternative), which certainly was at its maximum capacity with this amount. I used to follow the recipe from a cookbook I brought back from Spain, puzzling through the Spanish enough to figure it out, but Mandel's Fiesta Paella was pretty similar. I added chorizo because it was in the other recipe. I used fresh peas instead of her fava beans or frozen peas.
12 mussels, scrubbed
6 jumbo shrimp, heads on, for decoration
1 pound medium shrimp, heads off, shelled and deveined
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds chicken legs and breasts, cut into small pieces
6 ounces pork, cut into 1-inch cubes
4 ounces chorizo, cut into pieces
1 pound squid, cleaned and cut into rings
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup shelled fresh peas
6-1/2 cups chicken broth mixed with cooking liquid from shellfish
3 cups Cebolla rice
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, crushed
1 teaspoon pimenton
Several shakes powdered yellow food coloring
Pepper
2 bay leafs
3 teaspoons salt
1 preserved red pimento, cut into strips
1 lemon for garnish
1. Prepare the mussels by steaming for 3 to 4 minutes in 1/4 cup water, shaking pan over high heat. Strain the cooking liquid to add to the broth. Discard the empty half shell.
2. Cook the jumbo shrimp in water to cover. Add the liquid to the broth.
3. Heat the oil in the pan over medium heat. Saute the chicken, pork and chorizo until slightly browned, 10 minutes.
4. Add the squid and saute for another 5 minutes.
5. Add the green pepper and garlic and cook for 2 more minutes.
6. Add the tomato and turn up the heat so that it loses its liquid quickly.
7. Stir in the peeled shrimp and peas and saute another 5 minutes.
8. Pour in the broth mix and bring to a boil.
9. Add the rice, dribble in the saffron, pimenton and food coloring mixed together with 3 tablespoons of water, add the salt and bay leafs; stir once to mix ingredients.
10. Cook at high heat for 5 minutes, then reduce to simmer for 10 minutes. Place mussels, jumbo shrimp and pimenton on top of rice and cook another 5 minutes. Let the rice set 5 to 10 minutes before serving. Garnish with lemon quarters.
