Mothers Day Paella Party
Published by ChefAnnetteGallardo May 8th, 2007 in Breakfast/Brunch, Chefs, Cooking Schools, Entertaining / Parties, Guest Food Bloggers, Mothers Day.Each year I’m asked for ideas on what to cook for Mother’s Day.
Although brunches are great it would be fun to do something different–at least compared to our American traditions. Paella is the infamous saffron rice dish bejeweled with succulent seafood, chicken, Spanish sausage, and of course the “sofrito”–a trinity of onions, garlic and peppers.
Paella is great for company when elegantly served in the pan for which it is cooked. In Spain it is the men who make Paella. Much like American men who gather around the grill, their Iberian counterparts gather around a Paella pan set on a slick propane burner or out in the country, where it’s done over a wood fire.
The “sofrito” is fried in rich gold-green olive oil until soft. Spanish chorizo is rendered until its deep rust red smoky paprika is imbedded into the oil where chicken pieces are fried. Rice is added and simmers in a richly fortified seafood stock topped with a bounty of seafood. If this dish seems a bit out of your comfort zone for the first time around but you’d like to master the dish – our Paella class next Saturday May 19 will give you the head start for next year or for any forthcoming celebration.
Annette Gallardo is chef/owner of South Bay School of Cooking in Manhattan Beach, Calif.
Welcome Chef Annette! Personally, I am not a big brunch fan if it takes place at a restaurant. I have memories of waiting in big food lines with lots of loud, unruly children in their Sunday best and everyone gorging themselves to the point of glutteny to get their money’s worth.
Brunches at home are another matter and it makes perfect sense to combine breakfast and lunch especially when out-of-town guests may be sleeping in or driving to your place.
Kudos to you for trying to add a little spice to our lives and helping us experience it more fully with your Paella dish.
On a more personal note, I need your advice. I tried my hand at making a simple sauce with wine and butter and the “liquid” remains from pan-cooking some tilapia. I tried to be really creative and add some grapefruit slices to substitute for lemon. It was a disaster. Could you please share with me how to make a basic wine sauce for fish?
I would have to know more of what “the disaster” was to help you understand what went wrong. Most recipes like sauces require someone to show you once and then you have it down. It is very difficult to put into words what needs to happen before adding the next ingredient. I will try to walk you through a “wine reduction sauce” anyway.
Remove the fish from the pan after cooking and set aside. Usually fish doesn’t brown enough in home cooking because the heat isn’t as high or people use Teflon coated pan the fish doesn’t fry but kind of simmers in it’s own liquid (another problem you
may have encountered) If so you must cook down the liquid until you get some kind of caramelization on the pan (again this barely works in coated pans).
Add butter to pan and shallots or onions if using and sweat them until they are translucent. If not using omit this step. Add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to get the caramelized bits off the bottom (again this does not work well in a Teflon type pan–also due to the fact that coated pans do not brown well and are black you can’t see what is happening with the reduction).
Reduce the wine to half and add the stock and also reduce to half. (This creates the rich concentrated flavor of a sauce)
Remove from heat and stir in a few nobs of cold butter to gloss up the sauce.
If you wanted to add the grapefruit it would have to be just the slices perched on the top of the fish after you poured the sauce on.
Again I’m not sure what you were doing but the pan plays a very important role in cooking and making sauces. Unfortunately people think that Teflon type coated pans are the best thing to use. They never get hot enough and the very nature of their purpose is so nothing really gets brown and stuck to the pan–Restaurants only use coated pans for eggs. Never anything else–that’s why they have such nice browning and flavor to the food.
I should blog about pans…this is the most asked questions in my classes and people refuse to give up those horrible pans and keep buying them …and think they are doing something wrong when it’s the pan that doesn’t perform.
Chef Annette,
That is interesting. I’m sure I have the wrong pans too. My mom bought me pans that were easy to clean just like the ones that she has. They are the Teflon kind. Some day I will buy some good pans. I believe you are right that serious cooks have the right pots and pans.
S.C.
When asked about fancy coated and other department store type pans I reply…do you think they use that in restaurants? You’ll never be able to sear, brown or go from stove to oven with any of those and thats how they get the perfect sear, and then be able to cook the meat through without killing it.
I suggest restaurant quality pans. They are cast alluminum, cost about $20 for a 12″ pan and last a lifetime. They can be found at any restaurant supply house (most are all open to the public) and not at any upscale department or gourmet kitchenware stores.
Are they pretty…NO but it’s not the pretty pan you want it’s the pretty food! Do they come in sets…NO you want function and that may mean you have a couple of cast alluminum saute pans, a Le Creuset Dutch oven and a stainless steel sauce pot. All perform their tasks perfectly. Most people use only a few pieces of a set and then go out and buy more of what they need.
Gas stoves as opposed to electric makes all the difference in the world when it comes to cooking. The higher the BTU’s (amount of heat) the better your cookware will perform. Although cast iron are good heat conductors the black finish makes it hard to see whats going on in the bottom of the pan, oxidizes acidic food and needs to be seasoned. Something most of us are unwilling to do.
No, I did not use a teflon pan. I started out with olive oil, added wine and fat-free heart-healthy butter (this was probably part of my problem). My disaster was that it didn’t taste very good. The wine clashed with the grapefruit and the sauce was non-existant.
CoCo,
I’m not a professional cook but I think you would need to add some “glue” that dissolves but still holds the sauce together plus some spices. Grapefruit is not as friendly as lime or lemon and then there would need to be sauteed onions and garlic as mentioned by Annette.
I’m not sure about that fat free heart healthy butter. I’ve seen a TV commercial where it shows a restaurant using it their restaurant but I wonder if they really do. Who believes commercials any more?
Maybe a drop of half and half?
As Betty Crocked suggests you could use something to “glue” or actually thicken the sauce like with flour or a roux but in a reduction sauce you don’t head in that direction. Once you start adding thickeners it no longer is a wine reduction sauce and you get into another type of sauce…but it can sometimes save a sauce which is not working for you. Also the addition of milk or half & half can sometimes be disasterous when using something acidic like wine or citrus..The sauce can curdle or “break” which is when ingredients separate are never able to become one fluid mixture again. Heavy cream works best for adding to sauces but again one must be carefull of the whole acid/fat combination.
Sauces are somewhat of a mystery to many. They are about chemical reactions and easily confound even seasoned home cooks. Understanding just when the alcohol is burned off or knowing when something is reduced enough is better understood when shown by someone rather than to trying to get it by reading it out of a cookebook.