CAPRIAL PENCE

Every summer John and I do a charity dinner at a beautiful house in the hills above downtown Portland.  The house was built in the 1920’s and designed after a house somewhere in the South of France.  Grand and beautiful, it sits high above Portland and has an unobstructed view of the city and mountains.  Every year a theme is picked and the dinner is sold at auction which can bring in about 50,000 dollars for the charity.  This year the theme was Spain.  Spain is a beautiful country with amazing food and wine. Spain was not the problem -- the problems began with the organizers, not the chefs, picking the entree for the dinner.

And they chose paella … a wonderful dish when cooked for 6 people, but one of the worst dishes to cook for 100 people.  It’s just so hard to cook everything properly for 100 people -- especially 100 people that spent a lot of money for this dinner.  When paella is bad it is really bad -- gummy rice, undercooked rice, overcooked seafood -- a litany of things can go wrong with this dish.  Maybe if we ran a Spanish restaurant I wouldn’t have been so worried about this dish. Maybe if I were crazier than I already am I wouldn't have been so worried about this dish.

Months before the dinner, John and I came up with a way to cook the paella in the oven, so we asked the organizers of the party to get us an extra oven so we'd have enough space to cook all of the rice from hell .  Now they tell me that not only do they want paella, they want it served in these large glass bowls.  Since I'm freaking out about the whole thing, we do a test paella in the glass bowl and it actually comes out pretty good.  Maybe I'm starting to feel a little better about this party.  But, being the type of chef I am, I decide to try the dish one more time. This time it didn't work so well: the glass bowl broke in half in the oven and rice and seafood went everywhere.  

The night of the party is beautiful, sunny but not too warm, with a soft breeze that blows gently. It's perfect.  The appetizers I make come out so good: empanadas stuffed with roasted vegetables and then fried; meatballs with fried almonds and smoked paprika; and chilled mussels with a parsley salsa verde.  The salad was delicious also -- radicchio, endive, romaine, blue cheese, melon, fried almonds, and sherry vinaigrette -- so good! And a simple gazpacho with mostly red peppers because the tomatoes are still not ready here. It comes out great. Then comes the paella….

We have two enormous pans filled with peppers, onions, rice, stock and other assorted items cooking on the stove.  First thing we have to do is get the stock to boil, and second, get the rice to cook evenly.  Things start going downhill fast.  There's way too much stuff in the pans and it's just not working.

I am sweating in places you really shouldn't sweat.  We decide to move everything into the ovens to finish the damn paella. So we scramble to get everything in the ovens, where things start going better.

Except the rice is still cooking unevenly and I'm seriously worried again. The seafood is done so we have no choice but to get this crap into the bowls.  Dishing the paella into 12 large glass bowls and making sure everyone gets seafood and chicken etc is crazy.  John and I are working frantically, trying to get dinner out fast and hot and not overcooked. 

Rice and peppers are flying all over the kitchen.  We've never made a bigger mess cooking in our lives, but I just want this dish out and on the table and out of my life.

Once the rice from hell is gone, the first thing I think is "I need a really big glass of wine."  It's out, the people seem happy, I am not happy, but we did the best we could.  (And I'm always my own harshest critic.)

The rest of the dinner was easy: sending out a selection of cookies and truffles, and cleaning rice out of every crack and crevasse in the kitchen.  I am sure that now, a week later, they're still cleaning rice out of surprising places.  I am giving you our recipe for the paella made in the oven.  Try it for a dinner party of six, but not much more than that ... and keep lots of wine on hand.

Paella

Serves: 6

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 ½ pounds boneless chicken thighs

1 small onion diced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 red pepper sliced

1 tablespoons smoked paprika

1 tablespoon dried oregano

pinch red chili flakes

2 cups arborio rice

2 1/2  cups chicken stock

1 teaspoon saffron

1 cup chopped good quality canned tomatoes

1 pound fresh clams, rinsed

16 shrimp, about  ½ pound, deveined

salt and black pepper

1 lemon, cut into wedges

Pre-heat oven 400 degrees convection bake

Heat a large oven-proof sauté pan or Dutch oven over high heat, add the oil and heat until smoking hot.  Season the chicken thighs and add to the pan, brown well about 4 minutes.  Add the onions, garlic, peppers, paprika, oregano, and chili flakes and sauté 4 minutes.  Add the rice and stir to coat well in the olive oil.  Add 2 cups stock, saffron, and tomatoes and bring to a boil.  Season with salt and black pepper, cover and place in the oven, cook 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, stir gently, add the clams and shrimp and remaining ½ cup of stock, cover and place in the oven and cook about 20 minutes or until the clams are open.  Add the shrimp and cook another 5 minutes until the shrimp are pink.  Remove from the oven and serve warm with lemon wedges.