Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Help me make Paella!

Saturday night we went to a big Christmas party and had the best dinner. Had I not had a "few" cocktails before dinner, I would have taken some pictures of the fabulous spread. We ate at a Spanish restaurant. We had some really great tapas - honey chicken, grilled sausage, scallops, langostines, and tortellini and cheese. But the highlight of the night was the paella. It was remarkable. Very flavorful, and absolutely full of chicken, calamari, mussels, clams and shrimp. Frankly, it was the highlight of my weekend!

I'd love to make my own paella. I even received a paella pan this year as a gift.

So here are some recipes I've found from:

Delia Smith
Rob Feenie
Man Made Food
Jamie Oliver

There are so many out there! Gah. I won't eat rabbit, so all those are out. I don't want vegetarian. I don't want beans. I would rather the stock be chicken than fish. I don't want diced up seafood, I want big chunks. I don't want pepperoni.

Can you help me? Does anyone out there have a kick-ass paella recipe they'd like to share with me? I'd love you forever!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Sara, i have a really good paella recipe kicking around somewhere ~ I'll pass it on to you.

Sara said...

That would be great Linda, thanks!

Unknown said...

Here you go!
http://kayaksoup.blogspot.com/2005/12/paella.html

FJKramer said...

Sara
I'm your blog. Penelope Casas is your resource. Food and Wines of Spain, Delicioso and Paella are some of her cookbooks.

Chef Ef also has tasty Catalan version with chicken and sausage (I used turkey Italian).

The Spanish Table is a great -- lots of ingredients --http://www.spanishtable.com

email me through Blog Appetit,
www.clickblogappetit.com, and we'll see if we can come up with a kick-ass paella recipe all your own.

I just made a great one last Friday, but it was vegetarian.

As a concept paella is very flexible about ingredients (except for the rice). It's technique that matters.

I've be planning a post on paella making. If I do it, I'll be sure to let you know.

FJKramer said...

Hi Sara,
I did a quick search on the web and Casas Paella de la Valencia was posted on the tienda site.
Here's the link:

http://www.tienda.com/recipes/paella.html

She calls for a couple of harder to get ingredients -- Bomba rice is a premium Valencian rice. Regular Valencia or Aborio will do if you can't get it. Spanish chorizo is VERY different from Mexican.

Any way, its a good place to start.

FJKramer said...

It's me again. I was just clicking around and I followed a link from Sam at Beck & Posh to a coffee page which just happened to have a great article on making paella, including photos of each step.
Here's the link:

http://bluebottlecoffee.blogspot.com/2005/09/fatted-calf-2nd-anniversary.html

Sara said...

FJK, thanks for all your help!

Andreea said...

Late help :) - I recently cooked paella as well, spice and all, chunky seafood, etc. Basically Spain at home!
http://gloriousfoodandwinerecipes.blogspot.com/2005/10/paella-ole.html
Hope it helps.