Nina and Ann, thank you! Nina, I am going to make that Jambalaya for the next more casual dinner I host. Sounds delish. Ann, your recipe looks incredible too. I couldn't find it in your pdf book though. I want to try it, but it seems expensive on my reduced budget with lobster. I guess I could omit that. What do you think of this recipe I just found on a website selling Paella pans (which I don't have, unfortunately)? It seems to be lacking without any chicken or chorizo. And I'm sure I'd have triple it at the least. I will probably cook whatever recipe I end up choosing in my Calphalon 7 qt pot...that has a large enough bottom that it might work - it's 11" diameter. Or would my 12" Calphalon wok be better? Seafood Paella Serves four (ideal for a 13- or 14-inch paella pan). This paella is good when served with lemon wedges, but it's even better when spread with a bit of alioli, a garlic mayonnaise that is the Spanish version of the French aioli. To make alioli, add a few cloves of chopped garlic and a large pinch of salt to a mini-food processor (or a mortar), process (or pound with a pestle) until very fine, and then slowly drizzle in olive oil to make a thick, mayonnaise-like consistency. Add lemon juice to taste, and process again. 1/3 lb. shrimp, peeled (reserve the shells for broth) Pinch of saffron threads Salt to taste 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil 1/3 lb. scallops (or calamari, cut in rings) 1/2 onion, grated on the largest holes of a box grater 6 garlic cloves, peeled 1 ripe tomato, halved and grated on the largest holes of a box grater (discard the skin) 1 1/2 cups medium grain rice 8 small mussels or clams (1/2 lb.), scrubbed 1 lemon, cut in wedges for garnish In a medium saucepan, boil 3 1/2 cups of salted water. Add the shrimp shells and simmer, covered, for about 10 min. Strain the broth, and return it to the saucepan. Toast the saffron gently (in a dry skillet or toaster oven), crush the threads with the back of a spoon, and add to the shrimp shell broth. Taste for salt; the broth should be well-seasoned. In a 14-inch paella pan, heat the oil on high. Meanwhile, pat dry the shrimp and scallops (or calamari). When the oil is hot, sauté the shrimp and scallops until almost cooked through, about 2 min. Transfer to a plate and set aside. Pour out all but 1 Tbs. of oil from the pan. Reduce the heat to medium and sauté the onion and garlic until the onion softens, about 5 min. Add the tomato, season with salt, and sauté until the mixture, called the sofrito, has darkened and is a thick purée, 10 to 15 min. Meanwhile, bring the shrimp shell broth back to a simmer. When the tomato-onion sofrito is ready, add the rice to the pan. Sauté until the rice loses its opaqueness, about 1 min. Increase the heat to medium-high. Pour in 3 cups of the simmering broth (reserving the remaining 1/2 cup) and stir or shake the pan to evenly distribute the rice in the pan. As the liquid comes to a boil, arrange the mussels or clams in the pan, submerging them as much as possible below the level of the liquid. From this point on, do not stir the rice. Cook the paella on medium-high, rotating and moving the pan over one or two burners to distribute the heat. When the rice begins to appear above the liquid, after 8 to 10 min., reduce the heat to medium low. Continue to simmer, rotating the pan as necessary, until the liquid has been absorbed, about 10 min. more. Taste a grain of rice just below the top layer; it should be al dente. (If the rice is not done but all the liquid has been absorbed, sprinkle a bit of hot broth to the pan and cook a few minutes more.) Arrange the shrimp and scallops (or calamari) in the pan. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and cook gently for another 2 min. to help ensure that the top layer of rice is evenly cooked. With the foil still in place, increase the heat to medium-high and, rotating the pan, cook for about 2 min., until the bottom layer of rice starts to caramelize, creating the socarrat. The rice may crackle somewhat, but if it starts burning, remove the pan from the heat immediately. Let the paella rest off the heat, still covered, for 5 min. Sit everyone down at a round or square table. Remove the foil and invite people to eat directly from the pan, starting at the perimeter, working toward the center, and squeezing lemon over their section, if they want.

The classic paella is rabbit, snails, and green beans. Peasant food. The hoity toity seafood paellas came later. But, like sangria, paella is at heart at improvisational dish, I think. The poor Spanish peasants wouldn't have turned their noses up at chicken or mutton if they could have gotten it, and there were probably times when the bunnies were scarce. Here is what I usually do. Make a hot wood fire - or a heap of really hot coals. Heat the paella (the word actually refers to the pan itself) to really, really hot. When you squirt a bit of oil on it, the oil should instantly smoke and even flame up. Throw on your rabbit or chicken. The pieces should be cut into serving-size (rabbit quarters, or chicken thighs), tossed in salt and lots of oil. The oil on the meat will help it not-stick and the cold meat will cool the pan enough that you can squirt more oil on it without igniting a fire. Using long tongs and gloves (the fire and pan are still really hot), flip the pieces to get all sides browned. Don't try to cook them through, you're just browning. Remove the meat and set aside. Dump a bunch of chopped garlic, onion, celery, a bit of tomato, a couple of seeded not-too-hot peppers, and whatever else you like in a soffrito, in the paella. Move it around to cook it without burning, add oil if there isn't enough left from the meat. As soon as the aromatics are soft, remove them. Add more oil and your green beans - you can use another vegetable, but beans stand up to the whole cooking process without getting mushy, which is more than you can say for the lesser veggies. The fire or coals are cooling and the pan, while still very hot, is not the smelter that it initially was, and you won't have to work so frenetically or wince at the heat. Remove beans when softened. Then cook the snails, of course canned snails don't really have to be cooked but they want to be kissed with the paella anyway. If you're going to wuss out and substitute prawns, then they get a kiss too. Now add oil and chorizo. No, that's not in the purist's paella, but if those Spanish peasants had had chorizo I'm sure they would have used it. Cook the chorizo for awhile, it is a wet sloppy Joe sort of stuff so it takes some time. Remove the chorizo, leaving its oils and residue in the paella. Pour the arborio rice into the paella, fry it just a little, and then pour in some hot chicken stock, just enough to barely cover the rice. I'm assuming you don't have any rabbit stock handy. Add the saffron and the soffrito, and stir. Smooth out the the rice in a flat layer, as the stock bubbles and starts to get absorbed into the grains. Take all the stuff you set aside - the rabbit, snails, beans - and nestle the pieces into the rice in a pretty design. As the stock gets absorbed by the rice, add some more. Taste the rice occasionally to make sure you don't get it too soggy. The fire is mellowed out now, it is content to simmer the stock and gently cook the rice and all the yummy stuff in it. When the rice is cooked, stop adding stock but keep the paella on the fire. Have a drink. After 10 minutes, use a chopstick or fork to feel the bottom of the rice, where it touches the paella (pan). Is it crusted and part-burned? No? Then keep cooking until it is. Sometimes you can tell that the desired crust has formed, by smelling a wafting toastiness. But feeling is more reliable. Don't skimp on this step. The crust is important, some think it is the best part of the paella. When you get crust, as confirmed by sone excavation, move paella to table and dive in. The whole process takes around two hours. More or less. Maybe more. I'm usually a bit drunk by the end. A cheap thin steel paella - carbon steel with red plastic wrapped loop handles - costs maybe $25 and you need it, but you don't need or want an expensive, pretty paella. Because you're going to get that pan freaky hot, maybe over a wood fire, it will turn black, the plastic will burn off, your hands will burn off if you don't have gloves, and if you bought a $250 polished copper paella, you'd just cry. The cheap steel pan just needs to be oiled and hung up for next time. This post was edited by johnliu on Tue, Apr 9, 13 at 22:52

How about Garlic soup? I've made something similar and would suggest skipping the egg & giving the soup a run through with an immersion blender. The soup is creamy & light. This isn't my recipe but I do have a T&T that I can post if you think that you'd like it. ----------------------------------------------- Sopa de Ajo (garlic soup) Ingredients: Water 5 Garlic cloves. Olive Oil 2-3 pinches of Salt One or two days-old bread in slices. The typical bread used for this soup in Burgos is "hogaza" a big rounded bread. 1 egg. Sweet paprika, hot paprika, or both! 1 dried red pepper (optional) Directions: Add water to a saucepan (some 2 litres), the salt, 2 spoonfuls of olive oil, the dried pepper and 4 garlic cloves in thin slices. Bring it to boil. Meanwhile, cut the bread into pieces, not very big, not very small. When garlic slices had been boiling until they are tender, add the pieces of old bread and let it boil. (To know if garlic is ready, take one slice from the saucepan and try with a fork. It the slice of garlic is tender, its cooked). Prepare a small frying pan and poor some olive oil on it (not very much, maybe 1 teaspoon will be enough). When the oil is hot, add 1 garlic clove previously cut in very, very small slices. Let them fry until they take a brown color, but be careful, dont let them get burned, as they would give this soup a very bitter flavour! When garlic on the frying pan is brown, add some paprika or cayenne pepper, the one you prefer. Dont add too much. Just the quantity you can take on the tip of the knife. Stir for a short time, after having removed the frying pan from heat, so that paprika (or cayenne) does not burn. Add a little bit of water on it and poor this mixture on the saucepan, covering the already boiled garlic and bread. Remove the saucepan from heat. Bit the egg and add it to the saucepan, stirring at the same time, until you see the bitten egg becomes solid, dissolved in the soup. Let it stand some minutes and the garlic soup is ready! Tips: We, at home, also add some chopped green pepper to the boiling garlic with bread. Other times, we add some slices of mushroom, but this just depends on your preferences. --------------------------------------------------- Nina

The great thing about those pans is, with the metal handles, they can go from stovetop to oven. That's where my paella pan really shines, in a dish where I can prep it on the stove in the paella pan, and then bake it in the oven. Baked pasta comes to mine. I make baked ziti with a lot of add-ins, so I'll sautee up the add-ins in the pella pan, add the sauce, and then when the pasta is done mix it all together and then bake in the paella pan to meld. Also goes from oven to table and still looks good, although yours, as I mentioned, would look spectacular . . . I almost bought myself a colorful cast iron paella pan but I really don't have the space for more cookware, and cast iron cannot be stored in a high or low cabinet, at least not the large pieces . . . if you are a weakling like me . . .