Photographs and Text by Corey Amaro.
First, you take a salsa loving man, put him in a tango style apron, and give him an enormous paella pan and turn up the heat nice and slow.
Next, you chop up red and green pepper, onions, garlic, snapper, prepare the mussels, and shell fish, and have olive oil, tomato sauce, lobster basque, and a ton or rice on hand.
Then you call your friends (especially those who do not have a kitchen to cook in) and have a Paella Party.
Our friend Philippe loves, and I mean loves, to make paella.
Philippe's paella pan is the size of a bathtub, I kid you not, it can make enough paella for forty people. Though I have a feeling that you are not as impress with the bath tub size of the paella pan, as much as you are impressed with the size of those shrimps (!), or should I say impressed with the "look" of those shrimps with their dangling legs, beady black eyes, and tails.
I am shockingly impressed that French Husband pinches off the shrimps' heads and sucks their insides out. I tell you after more than twenty years of being married to this man, it still grosses me out.
Making paella takes time. You need to prepare everything in advance, and because you need to saute each thing separately you will need many containers to hold each sauteed item separately. You will have a stack of dirty dishes at the end, but the reward is a whole lot of wonderful paella.
After each part of the paella has been sauteed, you need to prepare the round rice, which cooks with tomato sauce, lobster basque and olive oil. I promise I will add the exact recipe as soon as I ask Philippe to re write it for me. (I would lose my head if it weren't attached, and that is not because of French Husband's shrimp eating habits.)
When the rice is nearly cooked, the fish is added on top.
Now tell me do you love paella, or the polka dotted, tango, styled apron, or Philippe the best?
Yes he is single.
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