My neighbor and I share grilling secrets over the back fence. When I told him that I was making Paella he said "ON THE GRILL?" He has two little girls and I think he just cannot imagine taking that kind of time cooking dinner! According to our son-in-law, Paella is always cooked over a wood fire in Spain so apparently the grill is the only place to cook it! It was fantastic but it did take a long time. You want to stage all of the ingredients so cut them all up and measure them out ahead of time and have them ready as they are needed. No time for cutting and running in and out once the pan gets on the fire. I used more chorizo, tenderloin and chicken than the required by the recipe.
I didn't have a Paella pan so I used two iron skillets. They worked fine. The only problem was the fire was hard to adjust with the two skillets on the grill top. If I do it again, I will make sure that the fire is kept nice and hot so that the rice gets crispier. Rob says that in Spain you have to scrape the rice off of the pan.
The squid in this recipe was MUCH better than my first attempt. See March 14 entry. The small pieces of squid in this recipe were tender and nothing like the rubber socks from March.
The recipe calls for mussels which I purchased at Whole Foods. I either cooked them too long or they were empty shells. The mussel was hard to detect in most of the shells. But everything else was just fine - pork tenderloin, chicken thighs, chorizo sausage, etc. The pork and chicken do not get spiced other than from the chorizo. Next time, I think I will cook the meats some on the open grill before cutting them up for frying in the pan.
- Mark
You should ask Manuel for his paella pan. What was different about how you did the squid this time?
ReplyDelete- Steve
P.S. I still liked it last time...
Mrs. Grill'n says: The paella is a lot of work, and there is very little effect from the grill. This is one of the very few recipes which actually just calls for a normal pan to be placed on the grill. Other than being over a live fire, there is little benefit to the grill aspect of this recipe, since it doesn't contribute much change to the flavor, and it is a lot of trouble. If we did this again, we would probably grill each of the meat and seafood items, or just use the stove top!
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about that. Paella is supposed to be cooked over a wood fire so there must be something that comes from the smoke flavor. I agree that it was hard to taste this time but I'd like to try it one more time on the grill before we give up on it. May be a wedding week dish if Steve can get Manuel to loan us the paella pan.
ReplyDeleteSteve - the squid this time through was cooked briefly in the frying pan with grease from sausage and chicken and then slow cooked with the rice. It was much less rubbery. I even ate the tentacles which still looked very squidish!
- Mark