Paella on the Beach

I don’t remember much about my paternal grandmother other than her cupcakes. Bound up in tinfoil wrappers, they always had badly burned bottoms, which amassed on a plate every holiday as the family ate around the carbon char. Partially incinerated cupcakes remain my most enduring memory of her.

I have countless beautiful memories of my mom’s mom, who was, in almost every way a storybook grandma. However, her kitchen was a place of utilitarianism, a product of the lean years of her youth, and none of her recipes have entered the family culinary canon, though from time to time we talk about her ham and pickle sandwiches.

In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, my mother is a phenomenal cook. When asked to reflect on my favorite dish of hers, it is impossible to choose. Her desserts are legendary, engendering fierce debate among her friends and family as to whether her strawberry or peach/blueberry pie is superior. Her chocolate offerings include “Jenny’s Birthday Cake,” an oozing, mocha tower frosted in cocoa whipped cream, as well as a concoction known simply as “German Dessert.” Her cookie repertoire features favorites such as “White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut” and “Double Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Pecan.” Yet, these are merely codas to the symphonies of the meals she creates.

My mom is quick to print out a recipe she finds online or sees on one of the cooking shows she often watches. She calls these “experiments,” and few get added to the collection of “keepers.” Many of her keepers predate me, having origins in various exotic food crazes of the 1970’s. It is important to note that my mother is a vegetarian, and so many of her most popular dishes include meat as merely part of a larger creation, instead of being the focus. These include her homemade pizza; salty, noodly Shrimp Kamini, from an old “Japanese” cookbook with some culturally problematic illustrations; and “Clay Pot Paella,” which is the dish of hers around which I have the fondest memories.

Having grown up to be a “foodie,” or a “food snob,” depending on whom you ask, I recognize that my mother’s “paella,” is quite a departure from the dish’s traditional form. It is cooked in a clay pot in an oven, as opposed to a frying pan on an open fire, which may offend purists. In this case, I would recommend merely semantically reframing the dish as “Clay Pot Saffron Casserole.” I will continue to refer to it as “paella,” though it lacks some qualities of the dish from which it was inspired. Neither side of my family has any connection to the Iberian peninsula.

I have, from time to time, requested the paella on my birthday, but as a touchstone for my fondest memories, it is best consumed on a beach just before sunset among friends. The clay pot in which it cooks travels fabulously, retaining heat for hours if buried in the sand, and, in my opinion, a few errant grains crunching between your teeth only add to the experience. This semi-tradition started when I was very young, first shared with my mom’s college friends who would also vacation on Cape Cod. Food, laughter, and play mix in my recollections, and I remember smiling wide in my green “Life’s A Beach” sweatshirt among people I loved.

As the years passed, some of the faces changed, but the paella on the beach always stayed the same. My sister’s best friend, focus of a childhood crush, would eventually be replaced with my first girlfriend, then my second, then my third. Having a license allowed greater freedom in selecting a cast of characters to share these times with, and, without realizing it, adulthood crept up on all of us. Eventually I would lose touch with those who ate saffron rice off paper plates before watching the sun dip below the horizon, resulting in applause from everyone on the beach.

The last time I partook in a food-related writing challenge, I believe my mom was disappointed that I chose to write about fried zucchini and 9/11 instead of these most cherished family memories. I received second prize in that competition, but assured her that, in time, I would address the paella. It looms too large in our collective family memory to ignore, but more than that, it is an intersection of bittersweetness for me. We cannot go back to those times, decades ago, and our trips to Cape Cod have grown shorter and less frequent, but I am possessed of the notion that if I can merely find a way to put the right words in the right order often enough, I may be able to achieve a measure of success that allows us to return to the beach with a clay pot and make new memories.

Clay Pot Paella

2 onions, chopped

6 large mushrooms, sliced thin

1 green pepper, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

½ cup olive oil

2 boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces

Salt and ground pepper

2 Kielbasa

1½ cups chicken broth (she uses vegetable broth)

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon saffron

¼ cup hot water

1½ cups raw Arborio rice

2 large tomatoes, quartered

2 sliced canned pimentos

2 tablespoons capers

1 pound raw prawns, shelled and deveined

1 small can artichoke hearts

1 cup very hot clam broth

1 pound clams in their shells

SOAK YOUR CLAY CASSEROLE, TOP AND BOTTOM, IN WATER FOR 15 MINUTES.

Saute the onions, mushrooms, green pepper, and garlic in the olive oil until the onions turn golden brown, then remove from the oil and set aside.

In the same frying pan, brown the chicken on all sides.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper and set aside, then brown the cut-up kielbasa and set aside

Add the chicken broth to the frying pan, bring to a boil, and add the paprika, basil, oregano, and saffron (diluted in ¼ cup hot water and crushed in a mortar).

When the boiling point is reached, add the rice, stir, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the onion-mushroom-pepper mixture, tomatoes, 2 teaspoons salt, and 2 teaspoons pepper, then place in the bottom of the pot.

Add the sausages, pimentos, capers, prawns, and artichoke hearts and mix well then top with the chicken parts and the very hot clam broth

Cover the pot and place it in a cold oven.

Set the oven temperature at 480 degrees.

Cook for 35 minutes.

Meanwhile, scrub the clams thoroughly under cold running water.

When the 35 minutes is up, remove the pot from the even and add the clams. Return the covered pot to the oven and cook an additional 15 minutes. The clams should open.