The Gastrocast

 I was just watching the Fine Living Channel–I use my dvr to record food/cooking shows and watch them later based on content–a show I recorded a month or so ago.  The show was on Spain, or entertaining in a Spanish way.  It was filmed at a flash house in L.A. with all the beautiful people, and an Executive Chef from some Tapas Bar down there.  The show was all about throwing an OTT party; entertaining in Style.  So the dude is telling us how to make a seafood paella and he starts by placing the olive oil in the special paella pan, and then he begins dumping in the clams and mussels–the host of the show even says, "I thought you’d begin with the onions. . . .". "No, no they’d be burnt by the time we’re done. . . ."

Okay, valid point, but by the time he had begun to add the monkfish and some of the other ingredients the mussels and clams were cooked and turning into hard rubber pellets. I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears.  Not only that, but they started cooking the paella in the bright sun-lit day but don’t show them eating it until after dark. Utter crap.  Paella doesn’t take that long to make, nor is it rocket science.

The key to making any dish with shellfish is to add it as late as possible, or cook it briefly at first and then cool it and keep it cool, adding it two warm through at the very end.  The other thing is–if you’re throwing a flash party and hiring a big hancho chef: make sure they know what their doing!  Spanish Paella theme–ask him to cook it outdoors in the real, crowd pleasing traditional style: it would rock the party and amaze your guests.

I love cooking traditional paella.  I had a client who wanted to serve it on a beach to their wedding guests last summer. Alas, they got in a money pinch and the catering budget got cut. They wanted to keep the paella, but I couldn’t do it for their final budget–especially cooked live, on the beach for 150 guests.  We changed the menu, pulled off the beach and every one still had a cool time.  The cool thing about a paella is that is can be cooked anywhere and with the exception of a few necessary ingredients that make it paella, almost any foods can make a great one. The trick with it, and with any layered or multi-ingredient dish is to add the foods in the order of their cooking times, or just cook everything up lightly ahead of time and add it back in towards the end, so nothing gets over cooked.

I guess I need to get together a garden full of friends and Gastrocast a paella later this summer!

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 The Gastrocast has been mentioned on Bicyclemark’s Audio Communiquè #29–and no, I’m not the famous lesbian. . . .We’ll let Madge keep that tag.



Thanks for the mention Mark! Sorry about the crappy audio clicking–it turns out that my DVR was plugged into the phone line to be able to get the latest channel listings and that causes severe audio corruption while it is pinging the network.



To anyone who has stopped here because of Bicyclemark–thanks for taking the time to head over here. I hope you like what you see and hear. Please subscribe to the feed! to hear the Podchefs adventures and mishaps.



If you are wondering about the Mac Apps I was thinking of when I phoned Mark–here are two can’t live withouts.



Circus Ponies Notebook — a fantastic notebook, outlining, opml app which is truely amazing.



Quicksilver — a free, opensource brain for your computer; a bit like Tiger’s new spotlight, but too cool for words. Access anything on your hard drive, launch any program with a few clicks, search any website.  Check out 43 Folders’ tips.

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 Just been paying my Quarterly Business Taxes–four sets of forms and all their red tape. Actually I fill out most of my stuff on-line so I can do it at the last minute, or whenever I can but it still is a ton of information. What gets me is that you only have to do it every three months so you hope your computer will remember all the useless passwords and bit of information you need to fill out, including the obscure name of each website, but NO.  Not only that, they keep changing the websites’ layouts so that the form fill features don’t even work.  I’ve applied a lot of post-it notes to my files this time in hopes that in 3 months time I won’t have to spend an extra hour spinning my wheels.  And all this for a quarter in which I’ve had no business, no employees, and collected no taxes. It’s so unfair. The same amount of paperwork as Microsoft for a micro-corporation of two. Here’s looking to a better second quarter. . . .

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 Just recieved the syllabus for a conference in Oxford, UK called "Food without Borders–a forum on Culinary Diversity".  It takes place in August the week before my wedding Anniversary. . .hmm, perhaps the Wife would support this one. . . . I’d better start campaigning now. I have month to try to fund this adventure. I would love to head over and hit the lectures with my iRiver and podcast from there.  A) Oxford is a great place. B)Some of the guest there will be fantasic, among them Peter Gordon, Sri Owen and Raymond Blanc. A few of my Heroes.



Four days of food and more food and food theory. I won’t bore you with the details of the lectures, but there is a cool sounding tour of the Oxford Botanical and Kitchen Gardens and some beer and sausage tastings. There is also a Raw Milk workshop and tasting of new flavor trends. Some of the keynote topics involve the Global Food Trade: Cook’s Heaven, or Global Disaster; Maintaining Authenticity in the Global Kitchen; and Cultural Diversity and Survival. Certainly not everybodies Cuppa, but for me, an amazing schedule of treats. I think I’ll trip on over to BA.Com and checkout flight costs. . . .

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