of experimenting in the kitchen

Categories: life-in-general, whimsical-bits, beautiful-husband, tasmania

Date: 07 August 2010 09:44:29

I don't eat much seafood - not a fan of the fishies, love calamari (squid), don't like octopus, like tuna out of a tin, go on and off prawns, and that's about it - will eat mild tasting white fish in a fish pie if there's lot of white sauce ... I know, weird, but fish, to me, taste like rotten fish as soon as they touch the tastebuds ... my brothers still find that difficult to understand, as they didn't like fish as kids either - but now love it.

I've always said to them that I'll try things once (even though I know I'm going to hate it) fishwise ... and I do .. I"ve tried whitebait fritters (which look like catfood and taste as I imagine catfood would taste!), I had two serves of a beautiful fish pie a girlfriend made (full of very mild white fish and lots of lovely prawns, was beautiful), I've yet to try abalone (which is a big Tasmanian product, my brother in law quite often has it available). I like crayfish (lobster), can't stand crab ... apparently they're supposed to be similar but I can find no similarity. And don't even get me started on things in shells eg oysters, mussels, pippis, clams, blarg!!!!!

Anyhoo, what this is all leading up to is paella. My sister in law (the Chilean one) loves it ... I've always though it sounded lovely but I'd never eat it - loved the concept, hated the ingredients. Until January, when I had chicken and chorizo tomato paella at a lunch - and it was FABULOUS!

Now, I know the diehards will probably tell me that it's not 'proper' paella if there's no seafood .. well, der, but truthfully, I'm never going to eat it ... and if you do some research you'll find there's more than one kind of paella in Spain anyway, and they don't all have seafood - so I'm not too far off the mark if I experiment a bit.

Which I did tonight - and it was awesome! Chicken, chorizo, celery, garlic salt, chicken stock, long grain white rice, chopped tinned tomatoes, a bit of leftover locally made gorgeous pasta sauce (for the onions - I don't eat them normally, they don't like me, but the ones in this pasta sauce have been cooked to a beautiful sweetness and don't seem to bother me), and some paprika .. I'd like to have had a bit of saffron but didn't have any .... oh yes, and a little bit of Argentinian Cabernet Merlot (greenskins that Rich picked up a month ago - very yummy) ... and that's about it.

Worked a treat! Yay for experimenting!