Paella And What Else?

10 months ago

last modified: 10 months ago

SWMBO and I have been slaving on the house and yard for the past month. She has been doing interior painting and I have been stripping and sanding the exterior siding in preparation for painting the house. I repaired all the wobbly, leany, and outright missing parts of our fence and SWMBO has been working on the yard.

Every spring, we usually spend a few weekends getting the muck and rotten leaves of winter cleaned up, but this year is different. After spending so much of last year traveling, we are sticking close to home this year and tackling things we’ve neglected about the house, and that seems to have extended to a deep, deep clean and fix-up of the yard as well.

As a break, we have decided to make paella and eat it in the backyard amidst the piles of tools and supplies, pressure washer and disassembed grill, with a bottle of Portugese wine that DD brought home from her trip to Porto.

DD was skeptical of my proposal to make the original rabbit, snails, and green bean paella. I started my lecture about how paella began as a hard-scrabble dish in poor and rural Spanish villages, where rabbits and snails were foraged from the hills in lieu of valuable livestock or purchased protein. She responded, no, paella has shrimp and mussels. I said that was only after the dish had been co-opted by coastal cooks who had seafood in abundance. She said if I wanted to be true in spirit to the foraged poor-folk locavore origins of the dish then I was free to make my paella with tree squirrels and crows, but she, DD, preferred the more abundant version. Offended, I said that if she wanted to bourgeois up a humble dish, then why don’t we just make it with caviar, scallops, langoustine tails. She called my bluff so that’s what we are doing.

What would you do, if you were making paella? Rabbit or clams, shrimp or chicken? Do you have any paella tricks for me to try? I’ll be making a little one and a big one, in my fire pit over wood.

We will also make some broiled artichokes, a little cheese selection, and - hmm, what else would you suggest, as a supplementary dish? Nothing too complicated or time-consuming. I will be stripping siding all morning :-(

For six to ten people. We are not sure who is coming, made some last-minute calls but it’s Memorial Day weekend so folks have plans, or not, who knows. It will be random.

Featured Answer

John Liu
Original Author

10 months ago

Thanks, plllog. I don’t know if I’ll get to it this year. I have planned all June stripping paint, and then I need to get into my shop and start working on cars. My 1986 BMW needs work as does my 1989 Porsche, and my 1988 Vanagon. Yes, I’m kind of stuck in the 1980s as far as hobby cars go.

Comments (53)

CA Kate z9
10 months ago
I guess my understanding of what paella is/was is somewhat different than yours, John. I was told by Spanish immegrant friends that paella was what the cook had leftover and didn't want to waste... a sort of a catch all. The best I've ever had was such: leftover chicken, some sort of sausage, clams, a bit of lobster tail, and some veggies all in the rice and sort-of-soupy sauce mixture, with a nice crust on the bottom. Of course, she was an excellent cook.
plllog
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
What would I do? Local. Really local. Not foraged, but hand caught. Here, depending what's available by regulation, spiny lobster, broken up, in the shell. There, dungeness crab. Maybe some local fin fish if I weren't allergic. Rock cod or bonita. Razor clams or mussels, even baby octopus if you can find and catch them. Maybe ”bait”, like squid or anchovies. Really really local fare would be local acorns, but those aren't available. The rabbits and ground squirrels aren't good eating, so seafood is the better choice, depending on the fisheries and any health warnings. Basically, head to the beach (after checking the regulations) and see what you can catch.

The point of paella is it's all in the pan. I might serve antique variety olives on the side, since I hate paella made with olives, but since even the antiques don't really go with seafood I think they'd be more for while people wait.

My mother used to make a kind of paella which had leftover lamb (or even turkey) kebabs plus the vegetables they were cooked with, and tomatoes. Scrounged stuff, not foraged from the wild, but the fridge. It was really good. Paella can be anything good. My heart goes out to FOAS on the disappointment! All the bits are supposed to go in timed properly to be done at the same time. In restaurants, where it's labor of cost, not labor of love, they usually cook each bit separatly (making leftovers to put in, like my mother did), which isn't good for the melding of flavors, but should still be an acceptable dish.

To be honest, I'd be most likely to make lamb, sausage, and more veg than is traditional, because that would be my take on homey.
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John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
Umm, errr, I’m sorry to say . . . paella is canceled.

SWMBO and DS went to a comedy show last night. The 30th anniversary of our friend’s improv comedy competition club. When we shook them awake this morning, they reported feeling ill. Then the symptoms began. It seems like food poisoning. Not bad cases, but even so, they are in no condition to entertain or even to eat.

So DD called the audible, we cancelled paella day, when I was on my way to the seafood shop.

I’m disappointed. The plans had evolved to langoustine tails, mussels, green beans, and garnish of flying fish roe and cilantro. I’d bought the green beans but not the rest of it, so there is no wastage. I picked up some oysters for DD and I, some bananas and watermelon which SWMBO says she might be able to eat when she’s done doing what you do when you have food poisoning, and now I am faced with a whole afternoon/evening to fill.

DD is purging our book ”collection” to make room on the bookshelves. I am considering resuming work on the siding.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
I am stripping and sanding all the bad parts of the lower walls of the house, in preparation for painting this fall. I do a couple/few hours most evenings and on weekends. It’s not onerous and rather satisfying.

Here are flyfishing books.

More books

We are hoping to slim down the cookbooks

Paella would have been a nice break from this “work”, but it will have to be another weekend.

Sorry for the false alarm :-(

And thanks for all the ideas, which I will refer to when we finally do paella!
HU-547125811
10 months ago
Why i have rich dashi stocks in the freezer. They need to sip fluids when up to it. I stocked up on dumplings last week. Choices for those not feeling well.

We are deep in home cleansing as well. And the garden. Simple meals. Lobster rolls tonight.

-sleeve
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
Lacking stores of dashi stock, we are feeding them Pedialyte with “personal watermelon” - which is what the little watermelons are called now - in reserve. DD and I are enjoying oysters and mignonette.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
Anyway, on the original topic, my favorite way to make paella is over a wood fire. The lifecycle of the fire matches the needs of the dish.

At first, the fire is ferociously hot, far hotter than any range burner, almost Chinese wok burner hot. The thin metal paella pan gets hot enough to rapidly brown the rabbit or chicken or chorizo, even if you have to wear welding gloves and use your 18” tongs to frenetically transfer browned protein to and from steel bowls, and guard your face against igniting oil. It is what cooking in Mordor must be like.

As the fire settles into middle age, the heat moderates to the right level for cooking the sofritto, beans, and whatever else you have planned. This is like campfire cooking, comfortably paced, and the heat can be modulated with splashes of wine or stock.

When you pour the rice into the pan, mix in the sofritto, and pour in the stock, the fire has mellowed and the rice simmers, slowly absorbs the stock, and gradually forms the soccarat. You can carefully arrange the rabbit or shellfish, shrimp or squirrel, in artful arcs and colorful patterns, without the second degree burns and vaporizing oil from the Mordor days. You have time to sit back on your heels, sip Prosecco, feel the forming soccarat with a chopstick - or gauge its state by smell, if you’re good. Everything is leisurely. The guests are tardy. The paella is tardier. No matter. Pass the Prosecco.

I wish I was doing that today. Well, we have all summer.
plllog
10 months ago
I don't think my little barbecues are up to Mordor but you sure make it sound tempting....

Sorry to hear about the affliction, but maybe now you have time to find a nice rabbit. Are there game rabbits in Oregon?
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
I’m sure there are. There are also frozen whole rabbits at the fancy foodie stores. To be genuinely foraging around me, though, it would be squirrel, crow, and cat.

DD has the entire living and dining room covered in books!
plllog
10 months ago
Herbavores are preferable...I'd stick with the rabbits...
linda campbell
10 months ago
I might never eat paella again....some years back I was privileged to have Paella at a little restauraunt on the beach in Spain. the cook tended the paella over the wood fire with pieced of automobile tires strapped to his shins to protect from the heat of the fire and he used what looked very like ag arden hoe to stir the pan....the shell fish were sitting in a sink near by with water constantly running over them and draining out the bottom of the sink and running to the sea. Not sure anything could beat that experience...oh and the appetizers were fried sardines....long skinny fish deep fried, I think head guts fins and all....whatever they were delicious!
Islay Corbel
10 months ago
Love the life cycle of the fire. Hope family is recovering.
jakkom
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
+1 on Islay's post. Sorry your lovely paella plans got waylaid, and hope by now you'll have set a new date for your outdoor feast.

Just a slightly OT thought - there's a few Portuguese and many Peruvian/Latin American restaurants here that serve their version of paella. Interestingly none of them have the socarrat that is so highly prized in Spanish paella. I was talking to one of the Portuguese chefs once, and he commented that they use short-grain rice as they like it moist and creamy, not dry and toasted.

The other cuisines that prize the toasted crispy rice bottoms are Asians - Chinese, Korean and Japanese. There's a Korean restaurant in Berkeley and Oakland that serves every entree with sides of tofu soup (seafood broth, soft tofu, any chile level you desire) along with a large bowl that holds the upside-down shell of toasted rice, which you break into pieces and soften in the soup broth. My HK-born spouse always insists upon bringing home any unused toasted rice chunks!
plllog
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
And Persians!

In paella or Persian, I like it firm and tasty but not hard and char-toasty (though I don't mind a little charred edge on toast).
l pinkmountain
10 months ago
Isn't the key to paella the type of rice? Rice is one of my favorite foods, and I know you can buy special paella rice, but I might be tempted to sub my favorite short grain brown rice. I wouldn't go out of my way to put rabbit, snails, or anything else in it if I didn't like those things. I'm not a fan of rabbit and squirrel tastes like rubber bands, IMHO, but if it was a rabbit or squirrel that was eating stuff out of my garden I would devour it with relish. But since I don't trap and skin stuff, I would go with chicken, which is what rabbit tastes like for me. I love any type of seafood, but that would be a rare treat for me too as an inlander.

I make paella with fake chorizo and maybe shrimp and or white beans. I think it is really about the rice, and although I love perfectly cooked rice dishes, I don't have all the right kinds of pots and pans and terrines. So for me it is mostly a holy grail kind of dish. Kind of like sourdough, which by the time I achieved my grail, I just decided that if I really wanted sourdough I would just splurge and buy it!

On the flip side, I have not achieved paella perfection or tahdig (Persian rice) either and I'm not much in the mood to practice right now, as I have yard chores out the wazoo and I am also in the middle of a couple of big community service projects. Way too much juggling. That's why I don't post much here, I am all about fast and minimal prep and attention for our meals lately. I dream about someone making me the perfect paella over and open fire. Maybe some day . . .
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
Oooo, since we’re talking about toasted rice, I now have a hankering for sizzling rice soup. That used to be a standard Chinese restaurant dish, but I don’t see it much anymore.

DD has filled five bankers’ boxes with books we are getting rid of. Including some food and cooking books. The super-niche books and coffee-table type books are going, as are most of the healthy cooking and diet cooking books, the gimmick food books, all of the TV chef books except Pol Martin Vol 1 and 2, and the, um, duplicates.

She even wanted to get rid of my favorite Chinese cookbook, but I rescued it from the discard pile. It is basically old-school ”Chinese-American restaurant” recipes, the dishes that are unfashionable in today’s must-be-authentic foodie scene. Well, I think Chinese-American food is an authentic branch of Chinese cuisine, every bit as authentic as Italian-American cooking, and I want Sizzling Rice Soup back on menus [shrieking]! And if no-one will serve it, my trusty old soup-stained cookbook will teach me how to make it.

Persian rice is divine. I’ve never even tried making it.

Supposedly you gauge the state of the soccarat by sniffing the delicate wafting toasting scent. I always poke a chopstick through the rice to check. Lift a shrimp and poke there, then replace the shrimp so no-one knows you didn’t use your nose.
plllog
10 months ago
Good thing you rescued your book! I know it's the job of offspring to abscond with your stuff, but there's a line... I think maybe sizzling rice is off menus because it doesn't work on delivery, but people would order it, and if they said it wasn't for delivery, the customers would insist, not realizing it wasn't like heating up pizza gone cool in the box. ;)
nancyofnc
10 months ago
OK - So now I have to go look up sizzling rice soup!!!! Never heard of it before but I'm always eager for cooking something new - and I love, love rice, especially crispy as in socarrat.
jakkom
10 months ago
Actually, Chinese American cooking aka Cantonese American cooking, is gradually seeing a revival by younger chefs. In 2021 Resy published this piece, and although I can't get my hands on it at the moment, I remember reading in our local media some young 2nd- or 3rd-gen AA chefs were planning to open an SFBA restaurant with exactly what you, John, were sentimental about - the classic old-style restaurant standards.

This is the Resy article by Deanna Ting, January 2021:

Chinese American Food Is Its Own Great Cuisine. Time to Love It That Way.
jakkom
10 months ago
On the gourmet side of Chinese American cuisine, noted chef Brandon Jew has been running Mr. Jiu's in Chinatown for a while. Classic dishes updated with better quality ingredients and housemade sauces:

Mr. Jiu's/San Francisco Chinatown

He has three more affordable Chinese American restaurants, Mamahuhu - 2 in SF (Richmond district and Noe Valley) and 1 in Marin:

Brandon Jew Set To Open Another Affordable Chinese Restaurant
CA Kate z9
10 months ago
John, I’m surprised you don’t see Sizzling Rice soup in every Chinese restaurant. i guess I’ve never seen one that didn’t… even here in California. I love Sizzling Rise Soup and order it frequently.
l pinkmountain
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
My favorite restaurant was an old school Chinese one in the next town over. Lovely place, only sit down, no take out, big stainless serving dishes on pedestals where you could eat family style and share. Everything was house made and delicious. Of course it was a family business. Rare as hen's teeth these days, and what there is is almost all take out, greasy, overly salty with no subtlety at all. So far, now that we've moved back to MI, hubs and I have yet to find one halfway decent Chinese American or Thai or anything Asian restaurant within 50 miles or more. There are some nice ones just out of that range, in the town of Kalamazoo, which is about as close as I can go to find decent restaurant food. I may have to move there . . . even there it is a struggle. The pandemic is causing a restaurant revolution in my state. Some of the best places are closing. The old timers are just throwing in the towel and no younger generation wants to pick up the baton at least in the same way. The oldsters deserve their retirement. Time will tell what the next wave will be. Junk fast food rules in my home town, although even those establishments are closing. We are losing our Burger King, for example . . . the barbecue place never was any good and it closed. There is apparently a barbecue food truck but vegetarian me has not sought it out. There's a meat-oriented brew pub but I haven't been motivated to try it out, not being a beer drinker either . . . they have elk, pheasant and all kinds of other meat offerings, including duck which is rare around here. About the only thing that interests me on their menu is the walleye.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
You know what a “Little Free Library” is. They are little cabinets, usually a cubic foot or so, on posts in someone’s yard, where the owner leaves books for passerby to take and read and pass on. We have a dozen or so in my neighborhood. People strolling and walking their dogs and kids coming home from school like to stop and browse and bring home a new book.

DD is still purging and organizing our books. We have so many, I think we could start a little bookstore. We filled a dozen boxes with books to get rid of, some pretty good ones in there, and she said “let’s have a Little Free Library!”

At a local recyclery, we picked up two old kitchen upper cabinets. I bolted them together and added rafters and a steel “roof” from some ducting left over from my range vent hood project. This picture was taken while I was dulling the sharp edges of the sheet metal.

We are going to have labeled sections - Kids, Fiction, Non-fiction, Cooking, Hobbies, etc. Also some CDs because we have an excess of those laying around.

Now for the fun stuff. DD is going to design and make a stamp, “From the _____ Library” for the books. We’ll leave “library cards” for people to take, if they want, and we’ll have a little stamp on a chain, so they can stamp their card once for each book they take, if they really want to get into it. Which I imagine only little kids will, but who knows. We’ll have a “reading and writing” cork bulletin board, for people to leave notes - members wanted for book club, etc. Scrap paper, pushpins, pencil stubs. Maybe dog treats.

We have yet to pick a name for the library. When we do, to be fully ridiculous, DD is going to get the library its own Instagram account.

On the practical side, this cabinet is going to sit out in the Pacific NW weather year-round - not much sun where it will be, but plenty of wind-blown rain. We’re going to paint it some bright color, which should help protect the wood. I could take some more scrap material and make flashing lips to overhang the tops of the doors. I left the gable ends and between-rafters open, with the vague idea that little birds might shelter there, but may fill those openings. I’m be interested to see how long this lasts in the elements. At least it’s all wood, not particle board.
plllog
10 months ago
Such a fantastic idea! And so cute! Love the peaked roof and the weatherproofing to come. But you get birds nesting in it and Peeeyuuu! I'm not going anywhere near it. Go ahead and put up birdhouses 10’ away... I was thinking a wildlife cam focused on the books, to see them come and go, would be fun, but then I thought it might catch the users and maybe that would be creepy. You mentioned painting: my first thought was Scandinavian....
Islay Corbel
10 months ago
It's a lovely idea. Here, they're in public spaces. You can have much more fun with yours!
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
" a wildlife cam focused on the books "

I'd love to get a time-lapse video of the books coming and going. Since the doors are solid (not glass), I can't figure out any "automatic" way to do it without capturing patrons, or at least their backsides, as well as loads of passerby. I guess I can just take a pic each time I add new books.

I'm looking forward to passing on some cookbooks that we had to purge. Don't like throwing books away.

It will be installed on an ivy-covered bank under a tree, and hopefully over time ivy will cover its sides.
plllog
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
Um... Okay. That would be pretty, the ivy. But y'know, ivy invites rats and other creatures. Not as smelly as birdhouses, but still.

Also, do you think Lexan in the doors, or something else mostly clear would help attract readers? All the tiny libraries I've seen (only a few) have clear doors.

If there were a way to rig a fiber optic camera or similar inside, you can keep down the people pictures, except maybe some hands, and use the doors opening as a trigger, or just use a timer.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
Hmm, I could cut out the center panels and fit some clear acrylic panels.

Or, DD could paint books on the doors, which would be whimsical and less effort (for me).

It feels like I should close up the roof so critters can’t get in.

I was also thinking of installing a little interior light for evening browsers. That might have to wait until I install low voltage lighting on the fence, it will be easy to run a wire 12’ to the little free library.
plllog
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
Or get a solar charging LED....Or LED rope light around the opening.

You're right about the doors! Whimsical books tend by non-smelled little paint-birds...
l pinkmountain
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
I have a similar project waiting in the wings. I'm volunteering for a local group that is creating a community center in an historic home that was a beautiful funeral parlor and home for decades after that. A company bought it and ran it into the ground and the city ended up with it by default. They are giving us a planning lease and we got a couple of big donations to build handicap accessible bathrooms in what had been a back room ad on called the "Flower Room" where they took and held flower deliveries. They also stored a lot of supplied in there so there were these solid plywood painted cabinets that had to be torn out, with solid wood shelves. I saved all the wood to use to do shelves at my house plus a little free library on the grounds of the new community center. I have the plans too, but the person who was going to build it dropped out so now I have to find someone else . . . sigh. I may end up even paying someone to build it.

It's my final memorial donation to the Center, in honor of my late mother who was the town librarian. The historic home belonged to one of the founders of our town library, it is right across the street and the library actually started in that home before the current library was built in 1888. My mother oversaw the refurbishing and adding on to the historic library building keeping as much of the historic character and features as possible and the new addition blends with the old architecture. So that's what we're trying to do with this community center, and re-imagine the original library room as a place devoted to literacy. Meanwhile, I'm working on restoring the grounds, that's my bailiwick. I got involved because of my mother's history with the area. Really busy now because I am restoring my own yard too. I should have looked the other way but I couldn't . . .

The Little Free Library is supposed to go between these benches I just got. Either right next to or in place of the meatball shaped shrub which isn't really the right scale for that spot . . . the center red gravel area is going to have plants eventually but I'm working on some other stuff including a rain garden, and community vegetable plot, so that project is on the back burner.

To make this food related: we plan on having an ice cream social as one of our first celebrations in July, when floors should be refinished, bathrooms done and a basic kitchen installed. Plus my veggie and rain garden. . . Sooo much work. And then soon after, teas in the common room and book club meeting in the reading room . . .
Jasdip
10 months ago
I love your Little Library! We have them all around here, and I've been using them regularly. My bookshelves are full of books to read, and I spread the ones I've read around. I haven't been to the library in years since these have come into vogue.

We also have Little Pantries, same house-style, and people drop off and take canned and packaged goods, pet food etc.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
lpink, your project sounds wonderful. What a nice thing to do for your town and your mother’s memory! It’ll be a social hub and who knows what other things it will give a start to.

It’s so good to preserve and restore historic buildings. I’ve been active in the preservation community for years here. Individuals put so much effort into saving and activating historic buildings, which become hubs of activity and commerce, and line our most appealing and walkable streets, while the city and state keep passing new laws designed to encourage their demolition and replacement with cheaply made crap. Because developers have money.

Jasdip, we have Free Pantries here too. Part of the Mutual Aid initiative that sprang up during the pandemic and has gathered momentum.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
We finally did the paella tonight. DD has the better photos on her phone, so I will just post a couple of mine for now.

We used my fire pit, which is a circular pit in the concrete at one corner of my backyard. It is always a trial to cook there, because you’re squatting or kneeling on the concrete, flames are lunging up at your face, and smoke is chasing you around.

I put some scrap 2x4s across the pit and laid some pastry cooling racks over them. With a spray bottle of water, we were able to keep the 2x4s from burning up long enough to cook.

First I browned some ribs that had been pressure cooked and refrigerated to firm up. A roaring wood fire is incredibly hot, and the ribs were brown and crusty in no time.

Then we cooked the sofrito, which was a non-standard one. Garlic, tomato, onion, fennel, mushroom, olive oil, and white wine. After that was done, the green beans.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
DD was taking photos and video for her Instagram - kids these days, I learned she has 750 followers and 600 are people she knows or has met. Apparently when two young people meet, instead of exchanging phone numbers or emails, they swap IGs. Who knew? She was posting in real-time and one of her Italian friends in Marseille, a chef (featured in the Marseille thread last year), was “liking” in real-time from halfway around the world. Another thing that didn’t exist when I was her age.

We put the sofrito and beans back in the paella pan, added the rice, and started the slow process of adding stock - and wine, another non-standard thing - and turning the pan every few minutes. Why turn the pan? Well, the racks were not level, so the rice on one side had more liquid than the rice on the other side, which you must compensate for.

The smoke was really getting to my eyes, but I discovered that the goggles I wear for stripping paint do a great job of protecting your eyes from smoke as well as flying chips of lead paint. This is a very useful thing to know. With my goggles, welding gloves, and extra-long tongs, leaning over the flames and smoke of the open fire pit was only slightly uncomfortable.

When making a chicken paella, I brown the chicken and nestle it in the rice to cook, but for seafood paella I add the seafood near the end to avoid overcooking it. We went with shrimp, mussels, snails, and scallops. The shrimp and the scallops needed to be browned, and the fire was still a little too hot for leisurely rice cooking, so we took the rice off the fire and used another paella pan to do the browning.

Here there was a cheat. The shrimp and scallops were not browning enough - I should have done that when the fire was still roaring hot - so they got some flour to promote browning and some paprika to add color. Suitably doctored, the shrimp and scallops were set aside, and the rice was placed back on the fire, more stock added, and the snails and mussels arranged in the rice, to cook while the rice was finishing. When the rice was done, the paella came off the fire and the shrimp and scallops were arranged on the dish.

Now there was another cheat. I wanted more color to the mussels, so I brushed some Yoshida sauce on the mussels and we put the paella under the broiler for five minutes while I finished the ribs in the wok, tossing in a sauce from the reduced cooking liquid, Yoshida sauce, and lots of red miso.

Shameful cheats, I know, but the pressures of making the dish Instagram-pretty overcame my sense of honor, and that’s how we know social media is not reality, folks.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
Here is the paella about to be eaten. I didn’t get a picture of the soccarat but it was there, whew!
Islay Corbel
10 months ago
Tell me about your snails. Were they from a tin or fresh? It looks intriguing! I love your description of fighting the smoke and flames!
plllog
10 months ago
Pretty! I’ve never seen so artful a paella! it sounds wonderful. Worth the crouching and goggles.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
Islay, the seafood was all from H-Mart, which is an Asian grocery chain. They have “apple snails” meat in frozen packs. I didn’t know what apple snails were, but have now looked it up and they are freshwater aquatic snails that are considered an invasive species in the US and Asia. It is not expensive at H-Mart.

Tinned French escargot would be too pricey for, and wasted on, a paella. I’ve never seen fresh snails for sale here, except once (sea snails in a sushi restaurant tank, some 25 years ago). I once gathered garden snails and tried to raise them on lettuce and corn meal, for eating, but SWMBO was appalled and put an end to that.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
plllog, I would like cooking on the fire pit much more if it were raised up higher. Cooking standing or on a bar stool would be much nicer than squatting, and the smoke might go up over one’s head instead of in one’s eyes. You be reaching into the fire from the side, not above in the rising heat. You might even not reek of woodsmoke when done.

I’ve thought about building it up. Imagine a cylindrical structure, probably of brick - think castle tower? - with a fire pit on the top, about waist level. The pit would have a proper cooking grate, and maybe an annular counter around it, to set things on. There would be a lot of volume below, which could be a wood oven, for bread perhaps. Someday I will look into how this can be built and if it is something one can DIY. I’ve never worked with masonry.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
kind of like this. I’d remove the rock ” seats “ and replace with rusty steel bar stools. I guess the oven will need a chimney, hmm. Having looked at some DIY resources, the task seems do-able, maybe.
plllog
10 months ago
In Mexico, at least when I lived there, they had small bags of concrete at the grocery store to take home and mix up in your wheelbarrow fur just this kind on DIY. It is doable. My father, who was a builder, made a (rectangular) brick barbeue all the while muttering that he wasn't a mason. He had worked with bricks, and built some brick buildings (the latter with actual masons). From this knowledge, I highly recommend not making it out of bricks! Perhaps concrete blocks and rebar covered with concrete? If you want it to look like brick, you can do a decorative layer outside. But also do look at materials you can upcycle, and commercial products. There are lovely beehiive ovens out there. For that, you need the interior to br matematical. Proper fireplaces and wood ovens are base on the parabola and the position of the focus, for proper distribution of heat. you can still DIY if, but you need to do a lot of research and design work if you do. For just a standing pit, consider ”hacks”, like patially sinking a 55-gallon drum, and lining the bottom with heat retaining stones. That kind of thing. Maybe a polished stone counter from the scrap yard where they sell slabs.

Good luck! It sounds like a cool project.
John Liu thanked plllog
Islay Corbel
10 months ago
My husband tried growing snails years ago but gave them names so coldn't bring himself to eat them....... I hate land and sea snails. In England, land snails are called wall fish for some strange reason......
John Liu thanked Islay Corbel
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
DS got an aquarium, which is in our house so I tend it when he’s not here. Some of the more interesting inhabitants are the aquatic snails. They are useful because they eat algae, and they move surprisingly fast. Underwater, they can climb anything, and it’s common to see an aquatic snail dangling off the end of a frond, far above the ”seabed”, pursuing the last bit of algae, in a way that a land snail would never dare.

I’m looking into getting a pair of aquatic mini-crabs. They’ll be an inch wide, maybe. We’ll name one “Harry” and one “Sally”, so that from time to time, Harry and Sally will meet.
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
Plllog, I’ve been doing some research on DIY ovens, and it looks like the most practical method, for one who is not a mason, is to build a form of wet sand - basically a sandcastle shaped like the domed inside of the oven, gallery, flue opening, and mouth - then cover it with a particular refractory concrete, layers of insulation, then plaster a protective outer shell. The sand form is dug away, everything dries, and you have a wood fired oven. Often the oven mouth is finished off with brickwork, then an insulated door fitted.
plllog
10 months ago
That sounds doable, if intense. If you look back a dozen years here or in Kitchens or appliances, there were some DIYs. The big thing is the parabola. If you remember your analytic geometry, the shape of a satellite dish, otherwise known as a parabolic dish, is the dish that gathers the rays is a paraboloid (3D parabola), and the ”stamen” that sticks out of the middle has the collector at the focus of the parabola. This is because the waves coming in, hitting the parabla will reflect to the focus. Similarly, rays emitted from the focus, will reflect straight out. So if you have a parabolic fireplace, like the pre-wwii brick fireplace where I grew up, if you make the fire at the focus, the heat will reflect straight out. For a pizza oven, the firebox is usually underneath the floor of the oven, with the roof of the cooking chamber the parabola, and as the heat rises, it reflects off the parabolic dome to its focus, which, if it's made right, is the center of your pizza. There has to be a basic trick to getting the shape, like the string with a tack at the focus of a circle. Craftsmen have been executing this for thousands of years without knowing math.

It sounds like a fun project!
John Liu
Original Author
10 months ago
DD finally sent me a picture
jakkom
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
Looks great!

FYI, John, I ran across this photo in the SF Chron food news. I saw this in "new NorCA SFBA Peninsula restaurant openings". The photo of the Pho Ha Noi's Xôi gà roti with chiên dòn, or crispy chicken with a disc of sticky rice, is interesting. I had not seen a Vietnamese toasted rice cake in a restaurant before (but admittedly, in the EBay the Vietnamese restaurants are not as good as in SJose, where most of the community lives).

Page down to Pho Han Noi blurb/photo (free link)
carolb_w_fl_coastal_9b
9 months ago
Dang! Those mussels are huge!
John Liu
Original Author
9 months ago
jakkom, that’s timely as I’ll be in the Bay Area for a couple weeks soon. Thanks!

They are ”green mussels” from New Zealand, they are frozen in the H-Mart. No doubt some sort of invasive pest, but tasty.