A paella that needs a bit of work…

When I saw the Munchies’s video on Paella, I got a craving. It’s not an uncommon reaction to Youtube cooking videos, but there’s something kind of romantic about cooking a huge ass dish outside on a French street, not worrying about cutting up your vegetables and meats the same size, not dealing with the hassle of measuring cups and cooking at the right heat level, all the while getting plastered with wine with friends. Of course, it didn’t exactly turn out that way in my kitchen. I slaved away at chopping all the ingredients before hand (though my lovely partner helped out with cleaning the mussels), sweated my ass off attempting to cook the food, and didn’t even get drunk off the sparkling wine I opened (Roederer Estate Brut NV from Anderson Valley, CA). The end result for my first paella? Eh… it wasn’t BAD but it wasn’t exactly the greatest. It kinda reminded me of first dishes I made when I started cooking – a lot of adding rice and broth after cooking garlic and onions with a variety of other ingredients. Even after adding expensive saffron and sustainable-sourced seafood broth, the rice was undercooked and the mussels were lost in all the mush. Well – better luck next time. I’ll test the rice a bit better and add a bit of cayenne earlier in the cooking process. I think that would prevent it from being gloppy yet undercooked. Also, are the mussels really necessary? At least the spanish chorizo was delicious!

Recipe (that’s still a work in progress!)

I didn’t really measure out anything so take the amounts with a grain of salt.

• 1 cup paella rice
• 1/2 lb shrimp deveined and peeled
• 1/2 lb mussels
• 1 8oz Spanish chorizo sausage (not the same as Mexican!)
• 4 cloves of garlic minced
• 1 large white onion (I also added 1 large red onion) minced
• 3 stalks of green onion
• 1/2 cup of dry white wine (I used white sparkling wine)
• Whatever veggies you got lying around. I used spinach, mushrooms, frozen peas, and bell peppers
• 1 tbsp of tomato paste
• 1 tsp of saffron threads
• 2 cups of seafood broth
• 1 tsp of cayenne pepper
• Salt & pepper to taste (NOTE: taste for seasoning throughout cooking!)

1. Heat a large but slightly deep slanted pan over medium-high heat and sear shrimp for 15-30 seconds per side until some brown spots have formed on the pan and the shrimp. Remove shrimp from pan and reserve.
2. Lower to medium heat. Add minced onions and garlic to pan. Stir until fragrant, then add tougher vegetables (like mushrooms and bell peppers)
3. Add tomato paste and cook out for 5 minutes or so. Deglaze with white wine
4. Add rice and mix to coat grains. Add seafood broth, cayenne, and saffron and stir to combine. Place cleaned mussels around the dish and cover.
5. Once mussels have opened, remove. Continue cooking over medium heat until rice is cooked (around 20 minutes)
6. Remove shells from mussels and reserve. Add soft vegetables (like spinach) to pan to cook.
7. Re-add shrimp and mussels to heat through. Taste for seasoning. Serve with sliced green onions to garnish.

Trying Richard Blais’s “Bone Marrow”-nara Sauce with Spaghetti and Meatballs

Richard Blais seems like he has the cooking pedigree to teach me a thing or too: French Laundry alum, Top Chef winner, owns a bunch of restaurants, oddly handsome (I only take cooking advice from odd-looking people. They’re the ones who had to win love through cooking with their heart and soul instead of relying on their devilishly good looks). So when I stumbled upon his Spaghetti and Meatball with Bone Marrow recipe on Tasty’s Youtube channel, I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve been craving a good spaghetti and meatballs since watching Matty Matheson’s cooking show and this recipe looked interesting since his meatballs were held together not by the traditional breadcrumbs, egg, and assorted goods but rather with ricotta cheese.

I ended up making a few modifications (as most deluded home cooks do). Richard starts out the recipe using olive oil. I went a little less traditional and used some leftover leaf lard I had in the fridge. Maybe I’m disgracing all the Italians in the world, but who ever said cooking stuff in pig fat was a bad idea? I couldn’t find unseasoned ground pork at the supermarket and I wasn’t about to spend the time trying to find it, so I picked up some mild Italian ground sausage instead.

After cooking the onions and garlic and reserving some for the meatballs, I also added chopped carrots and bell pepper and fried those off before adding tomato paste and red wine. I’ve always noticed that, when using canned San Marzano tomatoes, my sauces have a little too much of an acidic tomato flavor to them unless I add a pinch of sugar to cool it off. Instead of adding granulated sugar, I figured the carrots, bell pepper, and reduced red wine would bring it all together.

As for the wine, I had some leftover Petite Syrah from Paso Robles, CA under the Magistrate label. It wasn’t really my favorite wine in the world – it was definitely drinkable, but the alcohol seemed to overpower any interesting characteristics in the wine. I gave it a 2.5 out of 5 and dumped the last cup left in the sauce.

Here’s where I made a few mistakes. I added another can of water on top of the tomatoes. My initial thought is that there wouldn’t be enough sauce for the meatballs. Instead, after I had simmered the sauce and blended it together for consistency, the sauce ended up being a little too watery and fell off the noodles. I thought about adding pasta water, but I figured the sauce was already too liquidy. I didn’t think adding more water would help, even if it was starchy. I also formed the meatballs a little too loose. I thought I wanted a soft meatball I could sink my teeth into, but they ended up being more crumbly that I’d like. I also think I seared them a bit too much, but that didn’t really affect the flavor too much. The bone marrow I added also didn’t melt. It ended up creating a bunch of fatty byproducts that were floating around in the sauce. I had to filter them out manually! This was my first time cooking with bone marrow… I’m pretty sure I fucked it up somehow.

Even with all of these caveats, the final product was pretty dang delicious. I didn’t need to season the sauce once. The seasoning from the bone marrow and the meatballs gave the sauce a rich meaty flavor (and the tons of fat didn’t hurt either). The meatballs were delicious – you could definitely taste the Italian sausage, but the added herbs and beef made it a joy to eat. I think using ricotta also helped the texture. You know how sometimes meatballs just taste… bready? Not using breadcrumbs is a pretty easy and (looking back) obvious change to make.

Definitely would make again – although prep and dishes for this recipe was a nightmare. I used my cast iron skillet and dutch oven plus a stock pot to boil the pasta and a baking sheet to briefly bake the bones before removing the marrow. Add on top of that all the utensils, mixing bowls, cutting boards, and raw beef/pork and you got some deep sanitizing to do.

Thanks for the great recipe, Richard! I love Crack Shack and need to make a stop at Juniper and Ivy at some point.