Guest Blogging: Party with Paella

Tonight, Karen writes about our most recent cooking experiment: paella.

Growing up, I never celebrated Christmas or waited for Santa Claus to come down the chimney bearing gifts (instead I partied with Hanukkah Harry over eight glorious nights). Late December wouldn’t mean much for me if not for the unique New Year’s Eve celebration cooked up by my parents.

It all started innocently enough. When my brothers and I were young, my parents went out and celebrated New Year’s Eve in the traditional manner. They hated it. Paying exorbitant prices for the same entertainment they could get on any normal night of the year, worrying about drunk drivers, and leaving the kids back home was not their style. So they decided to defy tradition and do up New Year’s Eve their way.

And thus was born the New Year’s Eve family feast. Meals generally started around 7ish and the final course never finished before midnight. Dick Clark was often on in the background and the menu was always gut busting. Hors d'oeuvres were varied and plentiful and included rumaki, cheese, chips, artichoke dip, spareribs, and cheese puffs. The appetizer was usually shrimp cocktail (with homemade cocktail sauce). Paella stole the show as the main course (although in later years Beef Wellington was sometimes served). Without fail, dessert was a layered parfait of fruit, whip cream, and nuts. In true celebratory fashion, sparkling wine was free flowing for all. In our younger days we were served the sweet goodness of Asti Spumanti (until we grew up and learned to appreciate finer champagne).

Thanks to the New Year’s festivities, paella holds a special place in my heart. So it came as little surprise that among the gifts my parents brought from a recent visit to Spain was the Spanish Bar and Restaurant Cooking cookbook full of paella, tapas, and sangria recipes. Taking the hint, Loren and I decided we should get down to business and cook up a storm.

We decided on a paella mixta (mixed seafood, sausage, and chicken) with serrano ham added in for good measure. The recipe was fairly extensive and included clams, garlic, onions, tomato, red pepper, olive oil, chicken, paprika, rosemary, thyme, cumin, rice, chicken broth, saffron, chorizo, shrimp, and capers. We seasoned and browned the chicken as well as the garlic, onions, tomato, and pepper. Then we sautéed the rice, added the chicken broth, and sprinkled in the saffron. Here was our first mistake - we used saffron threads but did not steep them first. As a result, the paella never got that deep yellow color we were expecting.

Next we were to transfer the rice into a paella pan (which we didn’t have) and mix in all the other ingredients. I don’t think we were prepared for the massive quantity of food resulting from the recipe but did the best to distribute among the closest paella type pans we did have. We then baked the paella in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven and waited. Here was mistake number two - we needed to bake the paella far longer than the recipe indicated (probably because we were using two pans). Initially the rice seemed hard and as if it would never fully cook. But our patience was eventually rewarded and we took the paella out to finish on a high heat on top of the stove to crisp up the rice and create the socarrat - the crisp, caramelized, golden rice that sticks to the base and sides of the pan. In attempting to create this toasty goodness we made our last mistake - the aroma of toasted rice coming from the pan signals a socarrat has been achieved. The point between socarrat and burn is slim, we ignored the smell and left the pan on high heat a touch too long. The rice and paella were still edible but just not perfect.

Here in all glory is our first attempt at paella. While no new traditions have yet to be born, I am sure we’ll be trying this again soon.



Posted by Karen

Guest Blogging: Karen's Analysis of the FFT Readers

Tonight, I'm going to put aside the keyboard to allow Karen to share some of her thoughts. Take it away, sweetie!

How'd You Get Here?

Did You Know: Food for Thought gets more hits from Google searches related to Fred Steak, Real Men of Genius, the Testicle Festival, and the nutritional value of food (generally sushi and Johnsonville Brats) than anything else?

For almost a year now, Food for Thought has been a personal labor of love consistently read by a relatively small group of friends and family. But in recent weeks, traffic to the site has been inching its way upward and Loren has been getting pretty excited. Being a Web 2.0 guy, he’s happy to see his work shared with a broader community. People have been coming from all over the world and getting here in the most interesting ways. I know because Loren (on more than one occasion) has shared his sitemeter statistics with me. While the numbers are nothing compared to the big blogs out there, I think the findings are worthy of note and would like to share some of my favorites.

Before we get started, let me stress again that Loren is thrilled by everyone who comes to visit his blog. The views presented here are mine only. Please don’t take any offense if you happen to see one of your own search terms listed; I am noting it because it was either entertaining or thought-provoking in some way. Come back often!

First, a look at the demographics of Food for Thought readers (from recent statistics):
The majority of readers (82%) come from the US. No big surprise there. But also represented are Australia, the Philippines, Austria, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom, Singapore, Indonesia, China, and the infamous Unknown Country. I know there are German readers out there too - not sure why you guys are getting slighted.

Lots of folks come into the site either through referring URLs (Food Wishes, Carleton, etc.) or personal bookmarks. But as mentioned above, many also come in as the result of various searches. Examples include:

• Testicle Festival
  
  Search terms have included: testicle festival utah, testicle festival woodruff, black gold festival 2007 woodruff. Similar searches result in links to the post about the festival at Mama's Place.
  


• Real Men of Genius
  
  Search terms include: bud light real men of genius, bud light present real men of genius, real men of genius boneless buffalo wings inventor.
  


• Food Nutritional Value
  
  Search terms have included: unfiltered sake calories, calories in unagi don, compare calories in baby back ribs and fish, calories in johnsonville brats. Links are taken to the July 2006 and August 2006 archives (among other places).
  


• Fred Steak
  
  Search terms have included: freds marinade, freds steak marinade, fred’s steak recipe, fred steak.
  

Beer can chicken and cherry picking are also starting to pick up popularity due to recent posts. And math pie/cosahedron/mathematical baking has also popped up more than you might think. Other intriguing searches include: quadruple BK stacker, taco in a bag, wild hotdish, loren cook "grill" (from China no less), and mmmm.

There are too many searches to even begin to mention (and the history only goes back so far). My, until very recently, all time personal favorite (and perhaps the most humorous search getting to Food for Thought) is: massage happy ending boulder co

But a new front runner has taken its place. Thanks to a searcher in New Jersey with ideals similar to mine, "beets nausea" can take its rightful place in the pantheon of Food for Thought Searches. And that lucky reader ended up reading a lovely story.

Let’s see what you come up with next!

Posted by Karen