paella

what goes better with good spanish wine than a good spanish paella? nothing that i know of. and so when i scored a couple bottles of good spanish wine from a tasting for an event i knew paella was the thing to make. i've never made paella before, so forgive me if this doesn't stick to tradition. but i find experimenting with ethnic dishes all the more fun when you just go with the flow.

i started off by browning 6 chicken legs in the rendered fat of a few strips of bacon.

danna, who joined me for diner, helped out by shelling a pound of shrimp.

i used 31/40 count shrimp for this because that's what i had in the freezer. i recommend using larger shrimp because they shrink considerably in the oven.

after browning, the chicken and bacon are lifted and drained on paper towels and 1 chopped white onion and a 1/2 pound of ground chorizo goes in to brown.

a cup of aboria (short grain risotta) rice is added and toasted in the oil for a minute.

a teaspoon of saffron threads is crushed and added to the rice. saffron threads are the stigma stems of the crocus sativus flower. the world's most expensive spice, it takes over 200,000 stigmas to make a pound of saffron.

a couple cups of chicken broth are added to the rice mixture and then the chicken and bacon go back in. a pound of clams, and a pound of bay scallops (the little ones) are added and mixed.

the bacon tops the pan and the whole thing pops into a 350* oven with a tight lid for about 45 min.

halfway through, you'll want to tuck the raw shrimp in. the later add time is to ensure the shrimp doesn't get overcooked. after the clams opened and the rice was cooked, i took the pan out and topped it all with fresh cilantro.

you'll see that the clams have all opened and the shrimp are nice and orange-pink (although a little overcooked to my tastes).

i used a 12" saute pan for this instead of a paella pan. the recipe makes more than enough food for... well, let's just say i had enough for lunch and dinner for a week. but unfortunately, with such a thick layer of rice, i didn't get the nicely toasted layer that many paella-eating revelers enjoy.

but the paella was very well seasoned and the seafood great. i would reconsider using so much bacon alongside the chroizo next time since it was a little too smoky. but other than that, i'd say this was a pretty good first paella.

how do you do paella??