Spanish Ayes

I love paella although I make it all too infrequently. I guess it has something to do with getting enough people together to finish it in one sitting … since, due to its seafood content, it doesn’t keep. Let me first list the necessary ingredients: one small high-quality kielbasa (or chorizo), one good flavorful small chicken, a dozen mussels, a dozen littleneck clams, a pound of jumbo shrimp, a small jar of sliced pimento, a good-sized pinch of saffron, two cups of short-grain rice, a package of frozen Le Sueur peas, a half cup of good olive oil, a chopped up Spanish onion, four crushed garlic cloves, a teaspoon of smoked Spanish paprika, salt and pepper, lightly chopped Italian parsley, the wedges of one lemon, one cup of dry white wine, and two cups of water.

The process: Clean the shrimp and de-sand and clean the shellfish (soaking in cold water with a good handful of cornmeal). Then start with a paella pan (preferable) or a very large frying pan. Add the olive oil and heat it up. Cut the chicken up into 11 or 12 pieces (including cutting the breasts in two). Salt and pepper the chicken liberally. Fry the chicken until golden brown and place on a plate. Slice as much of the kielbasa or chorizo as is your taste (to me, kielbasa is preferable to chorizo) into ½ inch pieces and also fry it until slightly darkened. Also place this on a side dish.

Now to the remaining oil (augmented if need be) add the onion and garlic and sauté until transparent. Add the rice and cook until it gets a chalky white. Add the wine, water, saffron and paprika, stir briefly, and bring up to heat. Then stuff back the chicken and kielbasa into the rice and cover for about 15 minutes (or a little longer if uncovered). Next add the pimento, the peas and tuck in the shrimp, mussels and clams into the meat/rice mixture. Cook until the clams and mussels open (easier if covered) and the shrimp are pink. For a flourish you might top this off with a cut-up pre-steamed lobster. Take off the heat and sprinkle with the parsley and arrange the lemon wedges around the pan’s periphery.

Place on a good trivet in the center of the table next to a large pitcher of ice-cold, fruity red or white (my preference) sangria and a basket of crusty sour-dough baguette bread. This dish should easily feed (serving-oneself) eight to ten hungry people.

Generic Asian Stir-Fry Hints

There are some things that I have learned over the years cooking a variety of Chinese and Asian wok dishes. They are:

  - Always prep (including cleaning and scraping if necessary) all your ingredients first as you won’t have time once the stir-frying begins. This means mincing (garlic, ginger root), grinding (pork, turkey), match-sticking (pork, beef, lamb, chicken), shelling and deveining shrimp, cross-cutting (beef, pork, scallions, asparagus, scallops, carrots, onions, celery, fish, peppers, scallions), de-sanding shellfish, and soaking in hot or boiling water (noodles, dried mushrooms, etc.)
  - Start cooking or steaming your rice as you prep your ingredients as this will take a good twenty minutes.
  - Your main ingredients should include a meat (pork, beef, chicken or even lamb or turkey) or fish/shellfish (carp, clams, shrimp, crab, scallops, lobster, flounder, etc); a vegetable or two or three (string beans, asparagus, broccoli, bok choi, baby bok choi, carrots, peppers, onions, cauliflower, celery, mung bean sprouts, baby corn, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, spinach, watercress, water chestnuts, peas, etc.); scallions; garlic, ginger root, sauce(s), and maybe noodles such as lo mein, cellophane (bean thread) noodles, egg noodles, rice noodles, or wheat noodles … and sometimes even fruit … such as pineapple in sweet and sour dishes.
  - Don’t be afraid to use exotic ingredients (snails, sea cucumber, cilantro, wood mushrooms, etc.) if you can find them … and get some advice on how to prepare them.
  - Strive for at least three or four contrasting colors (e.g., white meat, green asparagus, red pepper, and a brown sauce).
  - Strive for contrasting textures -- crunchy as in water chestnuts, soft as in noodles, chewy as in beef, hard as in peanuts or sesame seeds, etc. Don’t overcook everything so that it is all soft and mushy.
  - Strive for contrasting flavors – hot as in pepper flakes, sweet as in Hoisin sauce, salty as in soy sauce, bitter as in bok choi, sour as in lemon juice or vinegar, and umani (protein taste) as in soy sauce or MSG.
  - Strive for contrasting temperatures such as a hot stir-fry situated on top of cool watercress or chopped lettuce.
  - Don’t make everything in a brown sauce. Occasionally use just a clear sauce (chicken broth) or a red sauce (ketchup-based) or a yellow sauce (lemon chicken).
  - Always start with a hot wok. If you need to steam a vegetable first, add it to the wok and season it with a little soy sauce, then add a little water and cover for a few minutes and remove to a side plate. Then add to the hot wok just enough oil (peanut or safflower) to get the job done. I usually start by adding the minced garlic and ginger root and then the meat. You can coat the meat in corn starch if you want to get it crispy on the outside (if your wok is hot enough).
  - Then add the steamed and remaining vegetables and cook briefly.
  - Then add the sauce(s). Oyster sauce goes best with beef. Hoisin sauce goes best with pork. Black-bean sauce goes best with clams and fish. Ketchup-based sauce goes best with shrimp. If you want some heat, augment these sauces with Szechuan or Hunan sauces or red pepper flakes. And then use white pepper, MSG, salt, and sugar sparingly.
  - Thicken the wok sauce (as needed) with a cornstarch slurry made with a teaspoon to a tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with some water, soy sauce, dry sherry, or chicken broth. This slurry needs to come to a boil before it will thicken.
  - I usually finish wok dishes with any bean sprouts (to keep them crunchy) and a good handful of chopped scallions ... a few seconds before stirring well and turning off the heat. Then, after the heat is off, I drizzle on about a teaspoon to a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil.
  - You can place the finished stir-fry on a bed of cool chopped iceberg lettuce, watercress, frisee, baby spinach, etc. to create a contrasting presentation (and better taste).
  - Finally, if handy, sprinkle with chopped peanuts, black sesame seeds, toasted sesame seeds, honey-coated walnuts, etc. depending on the dish. Not really necessary though.
  - Serve with cooked or steamed rice.

Yes, you will make mistakes experimenting with these guidelines, but keep trying until you get a repertoire of dishes you like. Freely consult Chinese, Korean, and Thai cookbooks to get specific combinations that work well together. (Notice, I didn’t say “Japanese” as it is generally a water-based cuisine as opposed to the oil-based wok cuisine of other Asian cultures.) Even try to duplicate dishes you have enjoyed from your favorite Asian restaurant. I did with my Shrimp in Hot Spicy Paste dish. (See: Szechuan Taste)

Boobalaise

When I was a very callowed youth still dewy behind the ears, I was attending an American Management Association seminar all gussied up in my suit and tie and all (I just recently reread The Catcher in the Rye). Around noon, the leader of the seminar passed out menus from a local restaurant so we could order lunch. I said, “Oh, they have boobalaise!” to whit the guy next to me said, “I think it is pronounced bouillabaisse …” I was chagrined to say the most. As a red-faced penitence, I have learned to cook this South-of-France dish to the point where I can improvise with just about any seafood combination. However, there are certain necessities around which this dish is constructed -- leeks, garlic, an orange, olive oil, fish stock, saffron, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, and either a fennel bulb or some Pernod or Ricard.

The seafood in the American version of this dish traditionally consists of a sturdy, meaty fish like monkfish or halibut, a flaky fish like cod, haddock, or hake (even better, cod cheeks), maybe a few crabs, some cleaned/deveined shrimp, possibly some scallops and/or squid … maybe even octopus (double sucker-down-the-arm type, not single sucker), some shellfish like clams and/or mussels and, as a pièce de résistance, some lobster of whatever variety.

First start with the fish stock. This is best made with fish heads and fish frames begged from your local fish monger (as Julia Child used to say). To do so, sauté a handful of chopped onion, carrots and celery in some olive oil until “sweated” in a big enameled or stainless steel pot. Then add a few quarts of water and the fish heads/frames, a small palmful of sea salt, some grinds of pepper, a sprig of fresh thyme (or ½ a teaspoon of dried), and a few bay leaves. Simmer about an hour until all the goodness is rendered from the contents. Then cool and strain the stock into another container to use in the main dish. If you don’t want to jump through this hoop, use bottled clam juice or store-bought fish base/stock … which is now increasingly available. But the result won’t nearly be as good (and you will need to augment it with the herbs mentioned above.).

Next prepare a garlic mayonnaise (rouille) using two garlic cloves, a handful of bread crumbs or Panko , an egg yoke, a pinch of Cayenne pepper, the juice of ½ a lemon, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of fresh pepper. Place everything in a blender and process adding ½ cup of good virgin olive oil until you achieve a mayonnaise consistency.

Now split a good-sized leek in two and clean out all the sand between the leaves. Chop the leek crosswise up to and including most of the green part (my departure from the classic recipe). Again sweat this chopped leek in a good quantity of virgin olive oil in the same (cleaned out) large enameled or stainless steel pot until transparent. Add and sweat one fennel bulb cleaned and cross chopped just like the leek (save the gossamer top for a garnish) and about three cleaned and chopped up garlic cloves. Clear a space on the pot and place there a tablespoon of good tomato paste. Stir this with a wooden spoon until it is well heated and a little toasted. Next add back the fish stock, a large can of crushed tomatoes, and two good pinches of saffron. Stir well. Now, either grate and add just the zest from ½ an orange or cut two half dollar sized pieces of orange peel (the classic procedure) and add them to the fish stock.

Now for the seafood. To this base, first add the cut-up lobster, if available, and any larger cut-up crabs (such as Dungeness) remembering not to cook them for more than a total of 15 minutes. Then add the meaty fish (like the monkfish). Cook two minutes or so. Next the flaky fish (like the cod). Cook another minute or so Next add the well-cleaned clams and mussels. (to rid them of sand, soak in water with flour or corn meal for about an hour), any octopus, and any small crabs such as blue crabs or rock crabs.. Cover and cook about five minutes (making sure all the shellfish open ... if not, discard). Add the scallops, calamari and the shrimp. Cook a few more minutes until the shrimp change color. Season to taste with salt and pepper, some chopped up Italian parsley (don’t put the parsley in earlier as it tends to get bitter) and the chopped-up fennel gossamer. If you haven’t included fennel, add a jigger of Pernod or Ricard now. Stir well again and take off the heat.

Serve over crusty French bread in a large soup bowl adding a good dollop of rouille on top of the bread. Enjoy with a good glass of white wine (a Sancerre, a Pinot Grigio, a Chenin blanc, or even a Piesporter.) Have enough friends and family over to eat it all up because it doesn’t keep well.