skinny girls & mayonnaise

There are a few things you must know about paella:

• It originates from the region of Valencia in Spain, and traditional versions were made in the field by hunters and contained not seafood but rabbit and snails.

• The pan is called a paella, and the dish is named for the pan. While you can cook a reasonable paella without the pan, it won’t have the same theater (see the video below). Besides, it’ll only set you back around $20 for a 15″ pan from Spain. (www.surlatable.com)

• Paellas were traditionally cooked outdoors over an open fire. This is still the best way to cook paella. Although you can achieve just as good an effect on the barbecue. When our kitchen was being remodeled, I cooked outdoor on the barbecue for two months. We ate a lot of paella.

On the requisite Eurail-Pass-aimless-post-college-graduation-European-adventure, I often chose where I went next based on things I wanted to eat. I tracked down the legendary bread, fougasse, amidst the landmarks of Van Gogh paintings in Arles, and hunted tortelloni with walnut sauce in Genoa. And so I spent three languorous days in Valencia, stuffing myself on paella and falling asleep at odd midday hours from the sangria. In 72 hours or so, I ate 9 or 10 different paellas. I ate traditional with rabbit and snails, I ate touristy seafood paellas, I ate black squid-ink paellas and white paellas with fish and potato dabbed with alioli, I ate paellas made with noodles instead of rice. The least among them were among the best I’d ever had. And the best were a revelation.

Spanish food is one of my favorite types of cuisine to cook. And in the years since that vacation, I’ve made dozens of different kinds of paella. Recently I walked into a Sur la Table to discover they were having a 40%-off sale on all paella pans. So I finally felt justified purchasing that enormous 22″ pan I’d been coveting all these years. (“Enormous” being relative — in Spain they have paella pans several yards wide that feed hundreds.) Not that you should judge a man by the size of his paella pan. I’m unsure where I’m going to store it, but I had fun cooking a big paella for a bunch of friends over an outdoor fire (fortunately not catching the nearby state park on fire). Following are a couple videos of the big paella cooking, and a recipe for a typical seafood paella you can do at home — pan or not.

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Valencia seafood paella
serves 8-10

1 lb. Spanish paella rice such as bomba (or other short-grain rice such as arborio)
1 2-oz Spanish chorizo sausage, sliced thinly
1 Dungeness crab, cleaned and cracked into pieces
2 lbs. live clams in shell
1 lb. squid, cleaned and cut up
4 cups fish stock
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup olive oil
1 white onion, chopped
2 large tomatoes, pureed in the blender
1/2 lb. snow peas
2 tbsp. pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika)
5 sprigs rosemary
1 tsp. saffron threads
sea salt to taste

(*Note: you could substitute any of the seafood for other shellfish. i.e., mussels in place of clams; shrimp instead of squid, etc.)

Heat 1/4 cup olive oil over medium high heat in a 15″ paella pan (or similar). Add sliced chorizo and cook until beginning to brown. Add onions and cook until translucent, stirring frequently (about 4 minutes). Add rice and toast, stirring to coat each rice grain in olive oil.

Heat the grill (if cooking outdoors) to high. Add fish stock and pureed tomato to pan with rice, stir in pimenton and saffron, and arrange seafood, snow peas and rosemary on top. Place pan over heat and bring to a boil. (If working on a stove top, place paella across two burners.) Whether cooking on a grill or stovetop, you’ll need to turn 1/4 every two or three minutes to ensure even cooking. Cook for 5 minutes, drizzling with remaining 1/4 cup olive oil and adding chicken stock as needed to sections cooking faster than others.

For paella cooking on the grill: Close lid as much as possible (it might rest on part of the pan), turn heat to medium and cook for 20 or so minutes, adding chicken stock as necessary, until paella is cooked. (Test rice on the top, as rice toward the bottom may cook faster.) Add soaked wood chips to fire for smoke.

For paella cooking on the stove: After 5 minutes on the stove, add a bit more chicken stock, and transfer to a 400-degree oven. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes, until liquid has cooked away.

Remove cooked paella from heat and let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Wine suggestion: a bold Spanish Ribera del Duero or American temperanillo or lighter grenache, or sangria made with 1/2 red wine, 1/2 orange juice and a dash of orange liqueur such as Cointreau.