J. made her family's once a year paella recipe this weekend which requires a weeks worth of advance preparation and a day and a half of cooking. It's wonderful and a one of a kind treat, although the pets don't like the invasion of crustaceans before. As you can see Lena is taking a exploratory whiff/sniff of the Maine lobsters as they clatter along the patio, trying to avoid their Appointment in Samarra, a stock pot full of boiling water. Lena wasn't very curious in their non edible stage.
This is the full blown Valencia style seafood paella - chock full of lobster, shrimp, mussels, chicken, chorizo, pancetta, and prosciutto plus olives, peppers, onions, garbanzos, and saffron. I'm sure there are other things I'm missing too. We had something called paella at a restaurant recently, although it was a pale imitiation of what this was. Something like this is just too tricky to do off a menu though.
We started with chilled Fino sherry and warm nuts, pickled eel, olives and Manchego cheese outside. Ramon and Marina had brought over an older Rioja they had picked up traveling in Spain along with an authentic crema Catalena they made themselves, which made an impressive dessert. We were lucky that it was neither too hot nor wet to use the patio for apertifs.
Ed brought over Nora and her sister as well. We had gone to school with Nora (on the right) in Massachusetts; she was actually Sara's roommate as freshman. But it was great catching up after a decade or so. We drank a lot of wine with them, and then had the dessert muscat with the flan like custard that Marina had brought over. That was stunningly dense and tasty -- much more impressive than a creme brulee. Nora still speaks very fast, like playing a record at the wrong speed on your old fashioned phonograph. Ed just nodded his head, as if he could understand, while he wondered how bad of an allergic reaction he would get from the massive overdose of shellfish.
J. made her family's once a year paella recipe this weekend which requires a weeks worth of advance preparation and a day and a half of cooking. It's wonderful and a one of a kind treat, although the pets don't like the invasion of crustaceans before. As you can see Lena is taking a exploratory whiff/sniff of the Maine lobsters as they clatter along the patio, trying to avoid their Appointment in Samarra, a stock pot full of boiling water. Lena wasn't very curious in their non edible stage.
This is the full blown Valencia style seafood paella - chock full of lobster, shrimp, mussels, chicken, chorizo, pancetta, and prosciutto plus olives, peppers, onions, garbanzos, and saffron. I'm sure there are other things I'm missing too. We had something called paella at a restaurant recently, although it was a pale imitiation of what this was. Something like this is just too tricky to do off a menu though.
We started with chilled Fino sherry and warm nuts, pickled eel, olives and Manchego cheese outside. Ramon and Marina had brought over an older Rioja they had picked up traveling in Spain along with an authentic crema Catalena they made themselves, which made an impressive dessert. We were lucky that it was neither too hot nor wet to use the patio for apertifs.
Ed brought over Nora and her sister as well. We had gone to school with Nora (on the right) in Massachusetts; she was actually Sara's roommate as freshman. But it was great catching up after a decade or so. We drank a lot of wine with them, and then had the dessert muscat with the flan like custard that Marina had brought over. That was stunningly dense and tasty -- much more impressive than a creme brulee. Nora still speaks very fast, like playing a record at the wrong speed on your old fashioned phonograph. Ed just nodded his head, as if he could understand, while he wondered how bad of an allergic reaction he would get from the massive overdose of shellfish.
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