Rob Carson: Hi, I am Rob Carson. I am a radio personality and I like to cook and today I am in the kitchen of Javier Quiroga of To Your Taste Catering Vienna Virginia. He is an excellent caterer, I have had some of his food and it's wonderful and today we are making.
Javier Quiroga: Paella.
Rob Carson: Paella comes on, excellent. Alright now, the thing about Paella, it's absolutely—-it's wonderful, it's complex and you are going to love it. But let's talk about To Your Taste Catering, what do you guys do?
Javier Quiroga: We are the best catering company in the world.
Rob Carson: Okay, that's easy enough.
Javier Quiroga: We are a full service catering company with a boutique feel to it, where we really strive to take the word catering really and make it what the word really is which is taking care of you guys.
Rob Carson: You do things with a
Javier Quiroga: We do International Cuisine. We just specialize in that. We do international cuisine anywhere from Barbecue from Bahamas and Hotdogs to elaborate Paella like we are about to show you guys today.
Rob Carson: All right cool. First of all, let's talk about our materials. Obviously we are going to need a good Chef's knife, cutting board of course. You are going to need some pots and pans here because we are not only cooking stove top meats but we are also steaming seafood. So I see you have got a couple of sauté pans here.
Javier Quiroga: Couple of sauté pans and one larger sauté pan, unless you want to go ahead and spend some more money and buy the Paellera, this one here that we are talking about here.
Rob Carson: That's the Paellera.
Javier Quiroga: The Paellera and it's got to be -- if you use a sauté pan, it's got to be shallower pan, about two inches, so everything can cook evenly. Then we are going to need something to steam your seafood in and that's about it and then we are going to be using this bigger one here at the end.
Rob Carson: This giant sauté pan here which oddly enough is shaped just like Javier head. So I think his wife obviously did one of these things. So we need this because it's little bit deeper and we are going to put all the ingredients, stove top in here as we cook them and as we finish this.
Javier Quiroga: You could also just—if you are preparing the paella for maybe less people you can do something a little smaller.
Rob Carson: I will tell you something. Paella is not to be made for two people or even four people. Paella is about the family, it's about like eight people. So invite some friends. As far as safety, obviously if you are dealing with sharp knives, be careful, watch your fingers and of course lots of heat.
Javier Quiroga: And then also one thing that you have got to be careful with also the cross contamination a little bit. I think it's important to know especially if you are handling chicken or pork, always wash your hands, sometimes I carry just a spray of Clorox mixed with bleach.
Rob Carson: Yes, you are not mixing them together.
Javier Quiroga: Yes, quick, quick, quick although well cooking it later doesn’t really—it doesn't make
Rob Carson: And remember to wash your cutting boards as well.
Javier Quiroga: Always.
Rob Carson: Okay cool. So Javier, obviously we have a lot of ingredients here, let's run through them quickly, what do we have here? This is
Javier Quiroga: We have some wheat flour here to dress the chicken into. We have some regular Uncle Ben's rice we have some arboreal rice which is a more traditional thing to use for Paella.
Rob Carson: Okay, so you don't use both of them but you can use either of them.
Javier Quiroga: Exactly, you can use either of them.
Rob Carson: Quiroga, we have got some vegetables here.
Javier Quiroga: Yeah, we have some red peppers for garnish, some white onion also that we are going to need for the -- sautéing some of the other ingredients.
Rob Carson: Little bit of citrus.
Javier Quiroga: A little bit of citrus here for the end that -- I like to do that for myself.
Rob Carson: For sure. As far as meats are concerned here we have got
Javier Quiroga: We have some boneless chicken breast we have some pork chop there, nice thick pork chop. We have some Chorizo here and that's as far as the meats are concerned.
Rob Carson: Okay cool. I am noticing over here we have
Javier Quiroga: We have some artichoke hearts, we have some green peas and we have some cheek peas and of course garlic for the whole thing.
Rob Carson: Excellent. Seafood.
Javier Quiroga: Seafood, we have some Little Neck clams, regular clams, we have the large shrimp, and we have the shrimp with the tail and the head for garnish at the end also. We have the smaller shrimp that we are going to be -- because everything is about presentation, about mixing everything together. We have some squid here with the tentacles too and we have some bay scallops right there.
Rob Carson: As far as seasoning is concerned, fairly simply we have got some pepper, some nice salt.
Javier Quiroga: Regular salt and the star of the show, the saffron.
Rob Carson: And little bit of saffron.
Javier Quiroga: That's the main ingredient for the Paella. This is what makes Paella different from let's say a Risotto or from anything. The key ingredients for Paella are olive oil, garlic and the saffron.
Rob Carson: The saffron has a real hardy different flavor, you don't need a lot of it, and you don't need a lot of it, because it also not only flavors but it colors.
Javier Quiroga: Colors yeah, that's the difference yeah and a little bit of Olive oil.
Rob Carson: Okay great and your basic Extra Virgin. Okay cool. And of course we are going to be using a little bit of chicken broth as well. Now we are not going to cook with it, I am just going to drink it. No actually we are going to cook with it. Let's get started with the Paella.
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