It's Too Darn Hot, and Culinary Art

We actually had a frost yesterday, the first in ages here in semi-tropical Fulwood. The weird winter warmth does have its pluses, however, not least in the kitchen garden here. I wrote in a previous post about liking to pick something every day from garden, conservatory or greenhouse, and a few days back had a field day with parsley, bay, oregano and sage all to hand, Swiss chard, leeks and chilies all made good use of. I worry about climate change, and parsley surviving in the depths of our supposed winter should be enough to convince even the most sceptical - though apparently Trump, surviving on burgers and fries, would need an explanation of what parsley is. And that plants grow. And where Britain is.


On a totally separate topic, though if I wished I could do a cheesy segue by saying 'and talking of hot weather, we had a meal a week ago straight out of sunny Spain...' We did, and the main course was paella, served up to a bunch of friends at the table straight from my battle-blackened paella pan. It was so beautiful, even if I say so myself who forgot to photograph it, that it could have qualified as an ephemeral work of art. Chicken pieces red with paprika oil in which they roasted before being added to the saffron-tinted rice; fresh parsley (see above); green peas contrasting with the pink prawns. Of course as it was a thing of constructed beauty it would not be acceptable to the art establishment - though I could have let it rot for a month and then maybe it would have qualified for an Arts Council grant. A chap can dream. Then wake up screaming.


People talk glibly of 'the culinary arts', but for me that's a real thing, and something to aspire to. I cook from fresh all the time, and we live well - both in terms of nutrition and flavour. But only rarely do we get to enjoy something so visually stunning. For me that is where professional cooks - for whom nutrition is a side issue at best - stand apart from worthy amateurs. I'm not going to be making sugar baskets anytime soon, or cutesy waved drizzles of sauce, let alone pointless foams, but certainly the next time we have friends round I am definitely aiming to - on purpose this time - produce something that gives people eye orgasms. The two topics - climate and food beauty - actually do come together, strangely enough, in that we are now awaiting delivery of a load of saffron crocuses, as we've decided it's warm enough these days to give them ago in suburban Preston.

Colour Counts

Having written about how we are taking the health - and calorie - side of our eating more into account currently, a bit of balance. Away with the brown rice (not that I have any in the house) and the wholemeal bread (actually we had that toasted at breakfast), in with the bright celebratory colours to mark the most glorious day of the year so far, more like late May than late March here in semi-tropical Preston.


Not that colour is to be ignored as regards the healthy side of eating - the more colours, or so I reason, the broader the range of nutrients we're likely to get. It's the impact on the mood that colour brings that's more important at present though. Judge for yourselves if the main dish was colourful enough - for once I remembered to take some pictures.

I've posted before about paella as a Sunday special. We had a good friend coming round to eat with us, so an additional cause to do something a bit different.

And with the oil reduced to a minimum, none of the big cubes of bacon I generally like in my paellas, and seafood rather than chicken (it's the skin that gets you) as the protein elements, it was pretty healthy.

But it was the colour that probably did us most good. The tomatoes cooked into the rice helped, so too the sofrito that had yellow and red pepper. The saffron-infused stock added a touch of sun on what was a superbly sunny day. Even frozen peas did their bit. It was a thing of beauty to which my photography skills don't do justice.

Paella in Place of a Roast

We eat our evening meal (and breakfast) at the table nearly every day - an on-the-knee supper is a treat - but Sunday lunch is still special in food terms. It offers the chance to round off the week that's gone, and get ready for the coming one. Often the heart of our meal is a roast, ideally rib of beef but economically frequently a good chicken. Yesterday, however, we had a paella that cost about £7.00.

The sofrito was a carrot, red pepper, onion, and two sticks of celery all chopped into tiny dice and fried in oil until the onion was turning translucent. A half pack of paella rice was added and stirred about for a minute, then the usual routine of add stock, cook, add stock, cook until the rice is done. It was homemade stock from a chicken carcass cooked up with veg, to which when heated for the paella I added a few strands of saffron. Meanwhile four boneless chicken thighs were cooked in the oven, and at the end a handful of frozen peas, a pack of defrosted king prawns and (heresy but it works) fish sticks cut in two. The secret is plenty of salt and pepper, a teaspoon of smoked paprika, plus half-a-tin of chopped tomatoes which give it colour and depth. Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, and tip them and their fat into the paella, and serve. 

I guess the other secret is having a proper pan: it is not needed to make the thing, a wide frying pan is fine, but the look of a wide two-handled paella pan makes it seem special. 

In my old career I travelled frequently to Barcelona, and several times was served paella in a customer's  directors' dining room. Always with Rioja (red). Conversation inevitably turned to how to cook the dish - the cook rather demotically used to eat with us - and it was clear that for the Spanish the paella is the equivalent of the British BBQ, i.e. a man thing. Walk round El Corte Ingles and you'll see gas-fired paella cookers for doing the dish outdoors. It was evident too that everybody has their own recipe: variations in the sofrito; use chorizo or ham; rabbit preferred over chicken; include clams (terrific if they are fresh, the shells look wonderful). As one of my contacts there said, even if it is eaten on a Sunday, paella is a Thursday meal - meaning you can pretty much add whatever you have at the end of the week, so long as the flavours don't clash.