I enjoy cooking and it is always thrilling to try something new. I’ve wanted to try my hand at paella for many years. I think I first heard of it from an episode of Seinfeld. At last, yesterday I took the plunge into the Spanish dish. Using a recipe from the internet I bought the ingredients on Saturday, having to substitute the prescribed rice for Arborio as that was all that was available to me. It took about an hour to prepare and I included crayfish as well, having often seen those little critters included in paella and wanting to try them.
In the end the meal was delicious. It was a struggle not to finish the entire pan with my wife. While I prepared it I listened to the Getz/Gilberto Bossa Nova album and my thoughts wandered to For Whom the Bell Tolls which I had read some months past. The book is set in the Spanish civil war and the main character had a flask of absinthe. With this in mind and feeling inspired by my meal I prepared a glass of absinthe myself and all was good.
A cold tall glass of the green fairy
Will I ever make paella again? Absolutely. It wasn’t too difficult and the flavours are wonderful. The juxtaposition of seafood and chicken with the sausage is just too delicious to deny. I had been wanting to expand my cooking repertoire for awhile now and I am glad to say that paella will become a new staple.
Eat straight from the pan using a mussel shell as a spoon
Culinary beauty matched with aesthetic beauty
I’ve known Robert Jordan
I met him by a fountain
We shared anise and
spoke of Spanish mountains.
Sophia Slap 