It's going to be legendary!

The Failed Paella

Ok, I won't really call it a failure, but it gets a solid D. For those of you who don't know what Paella is, it's a rice dish with chicken, seafood, and sausage in it. It may sound kinda messy, but what makes it "different" is the addition of Saffron.

Saffron is the dried stigmas of the saffron flower, "Crocus Sativus Linneaus". Each flower only has three stigmas and each thread is picked by hand, which also leads it to be the most expensive spice in the world. If you look in Safeway, 11 bucks for about 3 teaspoons worth. SO! You may ask, what's the BFD about this expensive flower? It has a very intense flavor and the natural coloring makes it a very interesting spice. 1 Teaspoon in the 2 cups of water needed for rice will make the rice have a very interesting golden look.

Ok enough about that, so I got this cook book from my mom, Rachel's Ray's 30 minute Meals 2. Rachel Ray is this annoying food TV personality that has three different shows. She always has this big smile on her face and her attitude is very bouncy, happy, and she's never met a meal she didn't like. I swear, she could be on Fear Factor, with a pate of rotten deer on it and she'd be like, "MMMMM my favorite, the flavor is always good and blah, blah, blah while she eats it with a big smile on her face". SO she's annoying, but her cooking is "quick", which is convenient after work. She's always cooking in 30 mins, but I have yet to cook anything of hers in 30 mins.

So I'm working on this recipe for Paella, following it, and the downfall of this dish was the Chorizo. The recipe said to remove the casing, but chorizo is an encased sausage, and as I found out the hard way, does not hold it's shape when removed from the casing. The meat I was cooking soon became a mess of oily crap. It looked pretty bad. Also Chorizo is encased in a red coloring, which makes it very difficult to see when it's fully cooked or not. SO dinner was a real fun time. My own little Fear Factor going on. But so far I'm ok, but only time will tell.

I consider myself a competent cook, but this stuff just looked pretty bad. It tasted ok, and it's still edible, but all in all, I'm a but disappointed in the dish. I've had better luck with her Gumbo recipe, but I think I'll start following enrolls stuff. I'm looking back at this bloc and I'm a bit amazed on the amount of crap I can write about one disappointing dish I made for dinner. Ok I'm done for now, time to watch more MacGyver.

posted by Adam @ 10:32 PM