Paella Fiesta

Garfene Grandison, Gleaner Writer

In celebration of The Gleaner's Food Month, we have invited our diplomatic friends to share culinary delights from their respectivecultures. Today, we feature Spanish Ambassador Celsa Nuño and her husband Alexander Crowther.

We visited the residence of Spanish Ambassador Celsa Nuño and her husband Alexander Crowther. They prepared a popular cultural dish known as the paella. Paella is a Valencian rice dish that originated in its modern form in the mid-19th century. Many non-Spaniards view paella as Spain's national dish, but most Spaniards consider it to be a regional Valencian dish, and an identifying symbol, so to speak.

There are three widely known types of paella: Valencian paella, seafood paella and mixed paella, but there are many others as well, depending on the ingredients that suit your taste. Valencian paella consists of (arborio) white rice, green vegetables, meat, beans and seasoning. Seafood paella replaces meat with seafood and omits beans and green vegetables. Mixed paella is a free-style combination of meat, seafood, vegetables, and sometimes beans. Other key ingredients include saffron and olive oil.

On a very cool, yet sunny afternoon, the Spanish couple treated our reporters to not only food from their very historic cultural repertoire, but also displayed a wide assortment of Spanish wines that would pair very well with the unique dish that was being prepared. Paella is a typical

Celebrating Food Month

Spanish Sunday family dish where people get together. According to the ambassador, it is a complete dish, so it goes well with a salad and a wine of your choice, particularly a sangria. The couple decided to share with Food, the Valencian paella which had a mixture of deboned chicken and pork loin chops with bits of fat. According to Nuño, "rice and veggies are very much a part of the Mediterranean diet which has become a standard of everyday healthy cooking". Pimenton, which is a sweet, Spanish smoked paprika, was put in the meal to add spice, but not too much since Spain doesn't eat a lot of very hot/spicy foods like Jamaicans do, the ambassador shared. As Alexander added each ingredient to the already bubbling oil, the aroma immediately permeated the outdoor patio, wafting across the lawns of the property, with even the guards peeking out every chance they got to see what was taking place. As he continued to add each ingredient, his wife stood close by in admiration, (although she has seen him prepare the meal a dozen times) explaining the process, the history behind the meal and the ingredients that are often used to prepare it.

The prep time really depends on how fast one can use a knife to dice all the ingredients to be added to the mix. According to Crowther, it could take about 35 minutes with the prep time and up to one hour and 20 minutes for complete preparation. The ambassador did warn, however, that carrots were a no-no for this dish, but greens are a must. "You never add carrots to this meal. It's not a traditional thing, but everybody uses green beans. The beauty of the paella is that there are no fixed menu items really that have to be used, but potatoes and carrots are cold-weather vegetables and so they weren't readily available back in the day, so culturally it's frowned upon," she ended. As she finished speaking, she gave us a smile, and looked over at her husband, advising him to add a little more chicken stock to the already colourful meal. Alexander obliged, skillfully adding the stock, with just a little spilling over on to the flame, causing it to flare up. He laughed and responded, "It looks like we have a flamer right here."

Hot Plate

The paella is best prepared in a specialised shallow pan or on a charcoal fire, so that the heat can be distributed evenly. "A hot plate will have the heat concentrated in the middle and it would cook the outside, so you want to get the heat coming straight up. Crowther once participated in making a paella which was five metres in diameter, in the Dominican Republic, that could be used to feed 2,000 people.

The tricky part of cooking paella, she says, is knowing how much chicken stock is to be added to the mixture, since paella is not generally a liquid dish and the rice has to absorb all the liquid that is added. "The key thing is to find the right balance," Crowther shared. As he lifted the pan to display the finished product with colours such as yellow, green, and red, he continued. "Shaking the pan with the paella and not stirring is the best thing, since stirring might release the starch from the rice, making the meal become gluey, which is what they do when preparing risotto and not necessary for paella."

grandison.garfene @gleanerjm.com