MY PAELLA

Okay, so last night I made paella for the first time (I wrote this in December 2009).  My mom used to make paella on occasion, and while I enjoyed it, I always felt it was a little bland.  Hence, time for, as we say in the corporate world, a "redeployment" of ingredients.  My goal was to make it a wee bit more flavorful and a lot bit healthier (grammar fail).   I completely overestimated what I needed to feed ten people, and my paella pan was a little too big for my oven, forcing me to get creative, much like Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard 3 when evil Jeremy Irons, aka Hans Gruber's brother, sent them on a wild goose chase of seemingly impossible riddles.  But I digress. Rather than cook the paella in the oven, I cooked the items separately and assemble in the paella pan (which should be heated before the paella is put in the paella pan, or put in the oven (sans the seafood), to stay warm.  Even if I did want to cook the paella in the oven, there was no chance since my pan is too big! So here it is....I have edited it to served 4-6 generously

2 links of spanish chorizo, six links sliced and two cut in to small chunks.

1 chicken thigh, bones removed. cut in to pieces

1 chicken breast boneless, skinless chicken breasts (four halves)

garbanzo bean flour

garlic powder

salt

pepper

smoked paprika

1/4 pound mussels

1.4 pound small clams

1/4 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined, tail left on

1/2 can diced tomatoes, drained,chopped in to finer dice, and drained again

1/2 cup small green peas

1/2 diced red pepper

1 cup of brown rice

1 onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 tsp. saffron

1/2 cup white wine

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

olive oil

chopped parsley

1. Measure wine, add saffron threads and chopped garlic to wine. Set aside.

2. In heavy cast iron pot or dutch oven (like Le Creuset), coat with a small amount of olive oil.

3. Add chorizo to cook and render off some of the fat, remove from pot

4. Add chicken thighs, brown, remove from pot. Place chicken thighs in oven safe pan and cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. set aside with chorizo.

5. Remove all but two tbsp of the oil/fat in pot.

6. add onions and cook until translucent.

7. add rice. Stir to coat.

8. add wine mixture to rice, bring to boil.

9. add chicken stock to rice, bring to boil.

10. reduce heat to lowest setting and cook for approximately 50 minutes, covered.

11. mix garbanzo bean flour with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

12. Cut chicken breast in to chunks, dredge in flour mixture.

13. Saute chicken breast chunks in olive oil coated pan over medium high until cooked. After they are cooked, hit it with a little white wine and reduce. Set aside.

All of the above can be done early in the day. 30 minutes before serving. Steam clams and mussels in a mixture of white wine, garlic, and water, until open. set aside. Saute shrimp in pan.  Add all of this to your paella.   Make sure to check if any of your guests are allergic to seafood, which I of course didn't, and if they are, have a steak on hand for them, unless of course you learn they are vegetarians, in which case, you better high tail it out for some vegetable stock and arborio rice and make them some sort of kick ass risotto.  Unless of course, they are vegan, in which case, you need to jump in your vegan approved vehicle and grab the ingredients for ratatouille....and maybe some sweet potato fries......it's not that I don't love the vegans, I do, but cooking for them when you are generally free from restrictions in your kitchen can prove to be difficult on short notice.

ROAST CHICKEN

So I had planned to roast a chicken on the grill for Memorial Day, but, it's a nasty grey cool day here in San Mateo, so we move on to plan b: the oven, which, on a nasty grey cool day, works just as well both for cooking the chicken and for warming up the Eichler.     I don't often roast chickens, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis-no wait, someone else wrote that.   

I don't often roast chickens, but when I do, I try to mix it up a little bit.   This time, I decide to marinate the chicken rather than brine it.   I marinated for exactly 22 hours and 4 minutes, although I would round up to 24.    The marinade went something like this, although to be honest I did not measure:

A few cups of fresh squeezed orange juice
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup light soy sauce
1 tbsp ponzu
1/4 cup inexpensive balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
A few pours of grade b maple syrup
6 sprigs of fresh rosemary
some plain pomegranate juice
 6 cloves crushed garlic 
black pepper

I actually think there was other stuff but I don't remember what it was.  The point is, you can use whatever you like/have on hand.    I use the soy sauce in lieu of using plain salt.  It doesn't give the chicken an asian flavor, but you could easily go that direction by using lemongrass and ginger instead of rosemary and maple, and swap out the balsamic for more rice wine vinegar.

In the meantime, clean and pat dry a high quality roasting chicken, whatever size you like.  I put the chicken in a gigantic zip lock and add all the marinade ingredients.  Refrigerate overnight.

Remove the chicken from the marinade, pat chicken dry and make sure to wipe out inside of cavity with a dry paper towel. 

I like to roast the chicken in a 9 x 13 pan.  First, heat your oven to 425 (ish).   In the pan spray some olive oil spray or add a little olive oil.   Then add the following:

-lots of celery stalks
-lots of shallots
-an apple or two cut up in to large chunks
-a potato or two, or three, also cut in to large chunks

 I then place the chicken on top of the items above in the pan, tuck the wings under, and stuff the chicken with the following items.  Again, use whatever you like or have, of course that works together.

-1 shallot
-10 cloves of garlic, skin on
-large piece of apple
-a fistful of parsley
-a fistful of tarragon (I would also use fresh thyme if I had any, and you can add more fresh rosemary, but i didn't)
-a large chunk of an orange with skin on.

Now tie it up with string, brush it with some olive oil and melted butter (again, you could add all sorts of fun stuff here like a pumice of herbs under the skin)  and you are good to go!

Roast at 425 for approximately 20 minutes.  Lower heat to 350 and tent the chicken (with aluminum foil-two pieces, attached lengthwise, and made in to a tent-you can google this, it's a piece of cake).

Depending on the weight of your chicken, 15-20 minutes per pound is about right, but the best thing to do is check on it.  If it's 4 lbs, check it after 50 minutes.  If the juice between the top of the leg and the breast runs clear, it's done.     Below you can link to the USDA website which tells you a cooked chicken is cooked when the thermometer reads 165 degrees.

Is it done yet ?

This chicken really doesn't need any sort of gravy, it is good on it's own.  If I were going to do anything I would take some of the juices from the pan, make a quick roux with some flour and butter, add the pan juices, some chopped parsley, and salt and pepper.  Serve with steamed spinach or a green salad and all those delicious potatoes and shallots from the pan.   

Let me say one other thing about this whole chicken thing, I felt like a proud French woman from Nice or Cannes or somewhere fabulous, but without the fantastic outfit and not-fat french woman stunning looks.

GREEK SALAD REPURPOSED IN TO GAZPACHO

It's Memorial Day weekend, and I had all sorts of ambitions around different things I wanted to create.    As usual, the plans change.    I did manage to poach an egg in the microwave, something I have never done, and let me tell you, it's AMAZING!  Takes one minute,use the plate that you used to cover the egg to eat the egg (and a piece of sprouted grain toast), and you are done.  Suddenly Monday-Sunday breakfast may take on more than just plain oatmeal and a few blueberries.

Bon Appetit's instructions to poach an Egg in the microwave

Anyway, my big idea was to marinate a roasting chicken and barbeque it over indirect heat on a charcoal grill.   The problem is I started marinating said chicken at 4pm on Sunday.   More on that later, when I actually roast the chicken today.   

We decided to create a little of this, little of that based on what we had in the fridge.   We ended up with some smoked chilean sea bass from Whole Foods (really yummy), some smoked shrimp from the local seafood market (even yummier), a sort of salad of chorizo, chunks of baked potato, apples, parsley and a grainy mustard viniagrette, and some hummus.

My final contribution was a take on a greek salad with chunks of heirloom tomato, cucumber, flash pickled sweet onion, yellow, red, and orange peppers, feta, a few castelvetrano olives, garlic, aged red wine vinegar, lemon, olive oil, fresh dill, and pepper.  This was really tasty, but we weren't super hungry given there was so much food, so it ended up in the fridge overnight.       

This morning, I poured all of it in the Blendtec on the soup setting for two cycles, and BOOM!, a new gazpacho is born.   While the ingredients are similar to my other gazpacho recipe, it's a very different flavor profile with the feta and the castelvetrano olives.   I actually think it might be better.   I might go a little lighter on the vinegar next time if I were just making a gazpacho, but otherwise, it's quite perfect.   I like the idea of letting the ingredients rest together overnight, it seemed to add something to all the flavors as a whole.   

The soup has a beautiful rich tangerine color and a very smooth texture (you have to have a good blender or it just isn't the same).   In the future I would make an oregano dusted sourdough crouton to enjoy with the gazpacho, and I would not forget to photograph this as a salad and a soup!

Not being one of those people who does a lot of repurposing with leftovers, this was a pleasant surprise that I would like to begin to build upon. 


GREEK SALAD (and/or Gazpacho)

- 3-4 large high quality Tomatoes (no need to seed if you have a blendtec or vitamix, just core)
-6 mini red/yellow/orange peppers (I prefer the mini sweet peppers.  core and seed)
-1 seedless cucumber, peeled
-1/2 sweet onion
-1 clove garlic, finely chopped
-1/4 cup high quality feta (if you can get the marinated danish feta or french feta, these are the best options, they are a little lower in sodium than the athenos), cubed.
-10 castelvetrano olives, pitted and sliced vertically
-handful of dill, chopped.
-juice of half a lemon
-3 tbsp aged red wine vinegar
-good drizzles of olive oil
-fresh ground black pepper


Roughly chop the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumber and place in bowl.     

To pickle the onion, bring two cups of water to a boil with 3 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/2 cup white vinegar.  Reduce to simmer.  Add chopped onion for 30-45 seconds.  Immediately drain and place in bowl of ice water.  Drain again, pat dry, add to salad.

Add feta, olives, lemon, vinegar, olive oil, pepper, and finish with dill.

Serve as salad or blend to gazpacho....OR BOTH.  

Repurposing has kind of been my word of the summer.  I need to repurpose many things in my life, but that is a different blog.   


 




 

Liquid Olives

File under:   Most ridiculously wonderful thing I have eaten ever......and I will learn to make these, just as soon as I can get over the fear of working with chemicals that could a) cause me to lose digits, or b) blow up the house........these are the El Bulli liquid olives, except I have never eaten at El Bulli (something I will regret forever now that it is closed).   I had these at Jaleo at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.   And I will have them again, someday....

A NEW WHITE BEAN SOUP

Now that we are up in Northern California, it's a little bit more grey (well, a lot bit more grey), and a little bit colder than the San Diego area.    I find myself making us soup more often, which is not necessarily a bad thing.   This soup is in progress as I type....enjoy...

-2 oz diced pancetta
-olive oil to coat pan
-2 leeks, cleaned and sliced
-1 large shallot, chopped
-1 clove of garlic, smashed
-a little white wine
-2 cans drained and rinsed organic white beans (or the equivalent dried and reconstituted)
-a few sprigs of parsley
-a little thyme
-a hunk of parmesan rind about the size of a school eraser (those pink rectangular ones)
-a chunk of very lean smoked bacon (Nueske's is the best), about the size of two erasers)
-a hint of orange rind
-3-4 cups chicken stock
-salt
-pepper
-touch of cayenne

Coat your soup pot with olive oil.  Add pancetta and cook over medium heat.  Add shallots, garlic, and leeks.   Stir until translucent, and add a little white wine.    Add beans, stir.   Add chicken stock, parm, bacon, orange rind, salt, pepper, cayenne, parsley.    Let simmer.   You can eat this way or run through your blender (which is delicious).  The thing is, it has to be a good blender, like the Blendtec.   Speaking of which, those Blendtec people should pony up some sponsorship dollars for how much endorsing I do of their products, constantly trying to persuade friends and strangers who are about to buy a Vitamix to buy a Blendtec instead.     When serving, top with a little artichoke lemon pesto, or a swirl of creme fraiche mixed blended with red pepper pesto or romesco sauce. Some of my wiseass Facebook friends commented that it looked like I cut my finger and bled in to the soup in the final photo.  Whatever, it looked pretty and it tasted amazing.