paella & whole chicken breakdown

My family isn't big on Easter celebrations (besides egg hunts... and they're saying I'm too old for that now), but it's always a nice opportunity to get together over food and appreciate the beginning of spring. Things start to thaw, jackets are shedding and pretty soon all kinds of fresh, new growth will start to appear. In my mind, right now is when the real new year starts. I do not know where we came up with that January 1st business.

So, like a lot of other people, I was back home with my parents earlier today. I had offered to make dinner since I knew I had to do my blog post by tonight, and by Friday I had a plan: paella. Not exactly traditional Easter food, but like I said, we aren't too traditionalist.

I was also informed that my mom had bought a whole chicken, intending to roast it, but which I was now free to use--so in the spirit of trying new things, I decided I was going to accomplish one of my goals for this semester and break down the uncooked bird.

Ta da

Luckily mama's copy of Joy of Cooking has pretty good instructions for doing this, so between the two of us we figured out how to best go about it.

It's a good experience. My cuts were a little sloppy because I didn't really know what I was doing, but I think I could get this process down if I did it a few more times.

Note the fantastic rainbow apron

A drumstick!

So--after dismantling the whole chicken into its parts, we got some of it boiling and started on the rest of the meal.

I stole a recipe for paella off the database at work, since that was my inspiration for the dish. We had a chicken-chorizo paella at a cooking class a few weeks ago that I've been dreaming about ever since. My goal was to do it as much justice as I could in my parents' kitchen--and it turned out to be completely doable. I'll definitely be doing this one again some time, probably for a crowd because you have no choice but to make a lot of it.

Paella is basically a one-pan dish of meat and/or seafood, rice, tomato, vegetables, and spices--the essentials of which are paprika and saffron. My recipe also called for turmeric and oregano.

Traditionally, paella is cooked over an open fire which does two things: creates a crusty, caramelized layer at the bottom which is absolutely delicious and something you want to achieve if you can, and imparts it with a smoky flavor. We used smoked paprika to make up for the lack of bonfire aroma.

My slight modification of the recipe involved adding mushrooms. I like them.

What's up chorizo verde

We cooked both the chicken and chorizo all the way through first, and got the rice started in the leftover chicken broth before putting everything together. Kitchen efficiency!

I used my parents' largest cast iron as a stand-in for a paella pan. After getting the onions and garlic cooked with some of the spices, I threw in the mushrooms, let it cook down, and then added the meat, rice, tomatoes, and stock.

This was my modified-for-the-indoors cooking technique (thanks internet): after mixing everything together in the pan (and making a pretty bell pepper star on top), I brought the heat on the stove up to high and got the whole thing bubbling furiously. I cooked it this way for about ten minutes, moving the pan around frequently to evenly distribute heat from the flame. Once most of the liquid was cooked off, it went into the oven for another ten minutes or so to finish.

Out comes a dense, sticky, spice-heavy pan of soul-satisfying food. Add wine and family, eat, be happy.