Paella

[alysten]

The great period paella experiment was a success! I created a nice 16th century country spanish dish, the only thing missing was the correct veggies. The day started off with stock making, a veggie and meat. By the time the meat stock was done, I had a nice stewed chicken meat (stewed in veggie stock), rice pudding, spanish drinking chocolate, and defrosting persicate. Once the stock was done, there was paella.



Recipe to follow once I get it all written up.

Comments

[dreda.livejournal.com]

That looks delicious!

So, paella has changed that much since the 16thC? Or are the folks making paella in this country just making a totally different thing? (It looks wonderful, but like no paella I've ever seen.)

[alysten.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention that. In fact, paella has changed that dramatically from its humble roots. The veggie mix is what I had in the house, the rest of the dish is pretty accurate.

Paella in the 16th century is mostly a meat dish, with seasonal veggies. The meat would be what ever they had access to, chicken, snail, lamb, pork, rabbit, goat, cat, duck, etc. The rice is a short grain rice and when cooked has a consistency similar to risotto. Sweet peppers, onions, tomato, and other veggies would have been added. Though peppers and tomato you find added at later part of the 16th century.

Most American paellas use a saffron/safflower mix with a processed chicken base to get the super bright yellow rice, and use an American long grain rice. Also we are fond of the "mixed" paella, which has a pork product, seafood, some times chicken.

For this dish, I used a "brown" stock of beef, lamb and chicken. There is a pinch of saffron in the dish, so it has a yellow tint, but it also has taken on some color of the stock (which is a little brownish). Grains of paradise, pepper, salt, coriander and cardamon round out the spices. The chicken is dark meat and was stewed in veggie stock for 2 hours to remove the connective tissue to become uber fall apart soft.

Modern paella is made to be a stand alone dish. In period, it was created as a way to use up valuable food.This is the ultimate "leftover" comfort food dish. When I make this dish for River War, I will be using peppers and onion as the veggies to a chicken and lamb meat.