When my brother snagged a two-month consulting stint in Spain and invited me to pop on over, I bought a ticket to Barcelona pronto. I ordered Euros from the bank, alerted the credit card company, purchased travel insurance and perused guides to Catalonia, anticipating paella all the while.
Authentic paella pan available at Jacksonville's Pot Rack
My first meal featured the inevitable seafood paella. The pan arrived piping hot, loaded with crunchy bomba rice and all sorts of critters, most of which I did not recognize. It was worth the ensuing jet lag just to savor this dish, I thought.
Madre de Dios, the first forkful was almost inedible. It had been seasoned with a sea of salt. Undeterred, I ventured on to taste what looked like a tiny squid. Biting into it, I felt something sharp jab the inside of my mouth. After I removed the offending fish inconspicuously, I dissected another one as carefully as a student in zoology lab. Sure enough, hidden at one end was a spiny tail. Why didn’t the cuisine guidebooks warn me of such hazards? I carefully removed the tails from the others and munched on the rest of the seafood, abandoning the salty rice altogether.
After such a disappointing start, it became my unilateral mission to find the perfect paella. (I came close.) Along the way I became acquainted with different types of pimenton, smoky pepper powders used to flavor the dish. By the end of the trip I had purchased an assortment of pimenton and saffron. I was ready to make my own paella, minus the salt overload. The only thing I needed was a paella pan.
When Whit and Jo Parker heard I did not have the requisite pan, they bought one for me at Pot Rack. I then invited them to my house for a test run before I made paella for a larger group. The day before, however, I concluded that a private pre-test-run test run was essential. I found a video online with enough complicated instructions to be credible, watched it twice, took notes the second time, typed them into a recipe, gathered the ingredients and spent the evening cooking. The result was pretty darn good.
My confidence soaring, I decided to expand the guest list the next night to make it a paella cooking party. Everyone helped prepare the meal after having watched the video (the price of admission). We made a double batch, using my vintage Revere Ware skillet as a second paella pan. Here is the video link for those who want to make this wonderful dish:
http://www.finecooking.com/videos/how-to-make-authentic-seafood-paella.aspx
It might have been the happy bustle in the kitchen, or the flamenco music playing on the iPod. Or perhaps it was that among us we remembered all the key steps in the video. Whatever the reason, the paella was scrumptious—and there was nary a spiny tail to contend with. Everyone had second helpings, then sat around the table talking contentedly well into the evening.
I had finally discovered the perfect paella, made not all that far from home.
Gates McKibbin moved to Jacksonville after working and living in the Bay Area for three decades as a consultant to major corporations. This column contains her musings about this remarkable community and her new life far away from the fast lane.