Valentines day in Manhattan is crazy, you have to make reservations at leas 2 weeks ahead, and the restaurants are crowded with couples. I personally like things more intimate and I always go against the grain. Like I prefer to go on vacations to places when it’s out of season, you have the place to yourself, and the beach is almost all yours. And with restaurants I use the same approach, my favorite days to go out are Monday, Tuesday and Thursdays, the chefs are more relaxed, the servers are more interested. And Tuesdays is when usually restaurants do the food orders, so there are fresher ingredients.
Yesterday we decided to celebrate Valentines Day with Spanish food, and recently we saw the program with Mario Batali “ on the road again” and him with Gwyneth Paltrow were in this beautiful place where this man was cooking a paella. We watched the program drooling. How amazing it looked, so we gathered all the ingredients, my Paella pan my Spain book and cooked it together it was a lot of fun, drinking wine and listening to some Hip Hop (yes, we are probably having midlife crisis, but who cares) the important thing is we had a lovely night. We followed step by step the recipe and I was pleasantly surprised that I could reproduce something like that. And the price of my dinner was ridiculous compared with what it would cost us to have something similar in a restaurant. All the seafood cost 16 dollars, and they were from the ‘Lobster Place’ (Fresh Seafood store), the chorizo sausage was from ‘Despana’ (by the way this place is a must check) they have amazing Spanish products. It’s a bit of a process because you have to cook the ingredients separately and set a side. But if you prep everything before like I did it’s really not a big deal. And to finish the lovely meal I made some chocolate rice pudding, (Of course).
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Seafood Paella
- ½ pond chorizo sausage
- ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 6 large scampi or Dublin Bay prawns in the shell
- 1 medium Spanish onion, cut into 1/4 inch dice
- ½ cup pureed ripe tomatoes
- 1 red bell pepper cut in stripes
- 1 teaspoon Kosher salt, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon saffron threads
- 1 tablespoon sweet pimentón (Spanish smoked paprika)
- 1 pound calamari, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 2 quarts Fish Stock
- 2 cups Bomba or other short-grain rice
- 1 cup of frozen peas
- ½ pound mussels
- 1 pound Manila clams, scrubbed
Pre heat a 14- to 18-inch paella pan over medium-high heat. Add the chorizo sausage, let it brown transfer to a plate and set aside. Add the oil and the scampi and cook until golden brown on both sides, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate and set aside. Add the calamari and cook for 5 minutes or they start to curl. Transfer to a plate and set aside. Add the onion to the pan and cook until soft, about 8 minutes. Add the tomato puree, and the bell pepper stirring it into the onions, and cook for 3 minutes. Add the salt, saffron, pimentón. Add the stock, bring to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir well to distribute it evenly. Add the peas. Let it cook until rice is almost done. Add clams and mussels arranging them in nicely, bring the stock back to a boil, and cook, without stirring, for 10 minutes. Reintroduce shrimp to paella, taste for salt and add it if needed, then cook, again without stirring, for 10-15 more minutes, or until the liquid is almost completely absorbed and the pan starts to make a crackling noise (don’t worry, this is what you want). Remove from the heat and let rest for 10 minutes before serving.