Posted by johngl (select photos courtesy of Brian)
For the past three years, friend and fellow food fanatic, BigDMcC and I have gotten together, enduring some pretty extreme summer temperatures (the two previous years were over 100°), in order to stand around my backyard fire pit and make paella. For the past two years, these splendiferous tests of our fortitude have coincided with a holiday more widely associated with hoards of drunken adults blowing shit up.
As a reasonably healthy and maladjusted male, I, too, have an affinity for explosive displays, however, the wanton takeover of neighborhood intersections and outright disregard and disrespect for fellow inhabitants, just sets me off a bit. How dare I want to use to the use the street in front of my house for the purpose for which it was intended! What nerve!
But I digress.
We’re here to speak of splendid selections of superb comestibles! This is a traditional style (Valencian) paella made up of confit of duck, confit of rabbit, Navarro and Cannellini beans (Spanish and Italian, respectively), Spanish chorizo, saffron infused chicken/duck/rabbit stock, sofregit, snails, and bomba rice.
I’ve been preparing for this for a few weeks now. I made the sofregit (tomatoes, onion, and garlic) well in advance and confit’d the duck and the rabbit the day before the event. This was a simple preparation.
First, secure your bunny.
These weigh about three pounds each, which is really pretty big for a dressed rabbit. Once they are in this state, it is pretty easy to cut them up.
Arrange them in a pan…
cover in peanut oil…
heat on the stove top to 200°, then pop it into a 200° oven for about 3-4 hours or until the meat easily pulls away from the bone.
Here (above) is what it looks like after being in the low-heat oven until done. And below is the pile of bones leftover after stripping away the meat.
What I have found is that half the weight of a bunny is in his bones. These are not wasted as they wind up in the stock along with the duck bones.
This time, the duck confit was done in a similar fashion to the rabbit. Find some duck legs, cover them with peanut oil and cook them in an oven at 200° for several hours. I did the bunny and the duck at the same time. They were cooking away whilst I attended a wedding ceremony. Oh, one more thing on the duck, if you pull that skin off after its cooked, then render it slowly in another skillet on the stove top, you can make some wonderfully crispy duck “bacon” to have with your eggs the following morning.
Waste not. Want not.
So, now that most of the dirty work is done, we can get down to making up the paella.
First though, take a look at that pan. No, I mean a close look…
That is a real man-sized skillet. The only way to use this sucker as it was designed to be used is over an open fire pit. Luckily, I have one of those handy.
Let’s assemble our ingredients and head outside…
From top left: Spanish chorizo, Cannellini beans (under the chorizo), 4 cups of bomba rice (under the chorizo and beans), duck confit, rabbit confit (in the ziplock), olive oil, guajillo pepper flakes (under the red-checked lid), sofregit (dark red stuff), homemade chile pepper powder (under the black lid), Navarro beans (white lid with black spot), salt/pepper (bowl), Piment d’Espelette (white lid with green spot), and snails. Other than the stock, that about covers it.
Now, we need to prepare the pan for cooking!
Shown here, I’m spreading olive oil around a very hot pan. Note the large stick wedged into the handle. This provides enough leverage to tilt the pan and get an nice even coating of oil covering the 530 square inches of cooking surface. It really brings out the inner cave man in you.
Now that that is out of the way, we can add the sofregit, chorizo, and rabbit.
The idea here is to get everything mingled together and coated with the sofregit, which is the base flavoring for the entire paella. A sofregit can make or break the dish.
After the duck was added to the party, the four cups of bomba rice joined the fun. Add a little, stir a little, add a little, stir a little. Get each grain covered with that wonderful flavor.
Slowly, begin to add the saffron-infused stock and continue stirring. For this paella, we started with about 12 cups of stock which is infused with a full gram of saffron (hence the brilliant color).
Due to the unpredictability of the fire, attention must be paid to where the flames touch the pan. Too much heat causes the rice to burn and stick to the pan. In the photo below, I am using the hooked handle of the ladle to rotate the big pan.
Once all of the stock is deployed, it’s time to add the beans!
And then tweak the seasonings…
This is when the salt, pepper and three different kinds of chile powders get to join the fun. After the rice cooks a bit, give it a taste to ensure you’ve added enough jazz.
Don’t be shy. If you need more flavoring, don’t be afraid to add something totally wild…
In this case, we used the juice from these pickled quail eggs to liven up the stock a tad. It added both heat and some much-needed acid for that just-what-the-palate-needed tang.
Make sure that you keep a good, close eye on the fire…
if it gets too hot now, you can easily ruin all of that work. Go low and slow whilst the rice absorbs the liquids.
Allowing the rice to soak up the fluids for while, we then added some finishing touches. Below, I’m adding some roasted red peppers.
Oh, nearly forgot the snails. They went in just prior to placing the green beans.
Once we were happy with the doneness of the rice, it was time to get this baby off the heat, get it covered and let it rest a little. Moving this sucker off the fire pit is definitely a two-man operation.
But then, hmmm. What do we cover this with? I hadn’t really given that much thought.
The Weber lid FTW!
After about 20 minutes, we were ready to eat! The scents and smells coming off of this thing were amazing and they filled the kitchen with aromas that could not be ignored.
How do you serve this stuff? With a serving shovel of course!
Couple this with some really great wines — courtesy of our good friend Brian who joined us later in the afternoon — and you’ve got yourself a really fine meal.
This thick and juicy Finca El Bosque Rioja was fantastic. Here’s what the Wine Advocate says about it:
The 2002 Finca El Bosque is impressive. A micro-cuvee of 100% Tempranillo from the estate vineyards, it was aged completely in new French oak. While displaying an international style, it is an impressive effort made from super-concentrated fruit. Its dense purple color is followed by superb aromas of toasty oak interwoven with blackberry, creme de cassis, white chocolate, and espresso scents. Full-bodied, ripe, and rich, with well-integrated acidity, tannin, and alcohol, it is a terrific, albeit pricy offering. Drink it over the next 10-12 years. -94pts
Then, from one of my personal favorite producers, Tignanello:
I had my first Tig — an ’85 — at Brian’s house about seven years ago. I’ll never forget it. Here is what the Wine Advocate says about this one:
The 2001 Tignanello is an object lesson in how to make Cabernet work with Sangiovese, the two varieties balancing and enhancing one another in admirable symbiosis. (The percentage of Cabernet, in fact, was reduced from the previous 20% to 15% in this vintage, an important sign – I hope – of how the wind is blowing.) A blackish ruby, its perfectly focused plum and cassis fruit, given an additional complexity by notes of sweet herbs and saddle leather, is fully and completely shaped in flavors of impeccable volume, roundness, and depth, caressing and powerful and with an additional power on the close which promises another 15 years of gratifying drinking. Score: 93
And so it came to be that we sat around for several hours, eating good food and drinking great wine. Is there any better way to spend a Fourth of July afternoon?
I think not.
Thanks again to both BigD and Brian for their enduring friendship, their willingness to share of themselves, and their unparalleled generosity. Both myself and the most glorious spousal unit are deeply honored to be your friends.
