Paella

Gordon Ramsay's family fare cook book challenge day 54:

*Paella

 

Oh my, this was actually one of the hardest dish in this book for me despite the look of a big mix and mash pot of rice mixture. 

 

The most difficult part? Controlling the consistency of the rice. The desired look should be the rice is softened but still individuals. It requires a good knowledge about what kind rice you are using and how much water they take to become just soft.  Mine was too much water and the dish was a little bit too mushy.   

Still, the food was very flavorful and layered with all kinds tastes. The chilli pepper really give the a punch on flavor and made it mouth watering. The clams and all the seafoods was so delicious and combined with chilli pepper and tomatoes they made a perfect rich and exotic flavored dish. 

A lessen learned from buying seafood from grocery store is: do not buy it after 6. The full time workers went home already and the temp was a 15 years old boy. "Are these clams alive?" "ah,..yeah" . They looked pretty dead with all the open mouth. I got my amount and despite all the efforts to keep them cold, when I looked them today, half of them were not responding to any taps. So there, wasted clams. Oh, well, I never enjoyed cook clams anyways, cook anything alive is hard for me to justify it.

By the way, if you decide to make this dish, unless you have 6 hungry people waiting for dinner, only use half of the amount from the recipe. As you can see from the picture, they are enough to feed a crowd. 

Recipe online : http://www.plate-expectations.com/2010/gordon-ramsay-vs-jamie-oliver-paella-chef-v-chef-challenge-who-has-the-best-paella-recipe/