Rose Meringues to sweeten a milestone

A couple of weeks ago, I had a milestone birthday. It didn't exactly get lost in the shuffle, but it was a lower key event than I had originally contemplated - partly because I had just gotten back from a hectic ten days in Mexico, and was still doing laundry and catching up on sleep.

Fortunately for me, a friend was having a party the night before my birthday, so I got to see all of my friends with only minimal effort. Also fortunately for me, one week later, another friend was experiencing the exact same milestone, and she had a little get-together at her home.

I love to bring food to parties - no real surprise there. This time, I wanted something special, and because one member of the party-household is gluten-free, I needed a gluten-free special birthday treat. Ideally, one that I could put together relatively at the last moment.

Enter the meringue.

I don't tend to post much in the way of sweets, here. I really cut back on sugar a few years ago, and I tend not to do as much baking, anymore. My favourite kind of baking these days is where I get to make something fun and take it to share with other people, which helps regulate how much of it I end up eating. I still like desserts, but I like to share them.

These little babies are simply delicious - crisp shells with marshmallowy interiors. And, happily, gluten-free. Best made on a dry, sunny day, as meringue is hygroscopic, and will become a sticky mess if there's any humidity.

Rose Meringues
Recipe adapted from Laura Calder's French Food at Home

4 large egg whites
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon rosewater
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
2/3 cup white granulated sugar
2/3 cup icing sugar (if you want these to be gluten-free, check the brand)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 drops red food colouring

Whip the egg whites and salt into soft peaks that only just stands up on its own. Add the rosewater and continue whipping into stiff peaks. Combine the white sugar and the cream of tartar and add by the tablespoon into the egg whites, while continuing to whip. When the sugar has dissolved and the meringue is stiff, combine the cornstarch and the icing sugar and sift into the meringue, folding carefully until it is completely incorporated. Add the red colouring, and continue to fold until everything is a lovely pink and there are no streaks of colour.

Spoon the meringues onto a baking sheet lined with tinfoil (I got about 18 large meringues), and bake at the very low temperature of 225 F for 1 1/2 hours. The tops should be crisp when tapped. Allow to cool on trays (do not try to remove them from the foil until they are cooled, or you will probably wreck them). When completely cool, you can store them for a couple of days in an air-tight container. Theoretically.

These were readily marveled at and devoured by party guests, some of whom were fairly amazed at the sweet and clean floral taste.

Skillet Lasagna

Who doesn't like the classic flavours of lasagna? Unfortunately, it's a time consuming dish to make, and not really suitable for weeknights, although if you make two when you do take the trouble, you can freeze one and whip it out at a moment's notice (and an hour in the oven). Fortunately, it's really simple to make a delicious skillet dinner that riffs on the same flavours, and even relies on layering to achieve its goal: a lasagna-like experience in about 30 minutes (if you're motivated), using a skillet and your stovetop. Perfect for weeknights, especially if you want to take some leftovers for your lunch the next day. Assuming, of course, that there are leftovers (you can always increase the chances of leftovers by adding a salad and some garlic bread).

This can even be a quite healthy dish, if you use lean meats, and go with a more moderate approach to the cheese. I don't add oil to fry the meat, as it's not really necessary if you have a good non-stick or cast-iron pan. If the meat starts to catch too much on the pan, you can always splash a little dry vermouth or white wine (or water, of course) to zap the heat for a moment and loosen things up.

Skillet Lasagna

(Adapted from America's Test Kitchen)
Serves 4
Total Prep & Cooking Time: 30 – 45 minutes

1 lb meatloaf mix or any lean ground meat
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
Salt, as needed
½ teaspoon ground white pepper
pinch red pepper flakes
10 curly-edged lasagna noodles, broken into 1½ inch lengths
28 oz can diced tomatoes plus extra water (see directions)
1 cup tomato sauce
¾ cup whole milk ricotta cheese, optional
¼ cup minced fresh basil
2 – 3 cups fresh spinach, chopped
½ cup Parmesan cheese, grated, (plus extra for serving)

Pour the diced tomatoes, with their juice, into a four-cup measuring cup. Add enough water to the tomatoes to make 4 cups in total.

In a 12 inch non-stick skillet, break up the ground meat with a wooden spoon and fry over medium-high heat until it begins to brown. Add the onion and ½ tsp salt and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until fragrant, about 15 seconds. If you are using optional seasonings (see below), add them now.

Sprinkle the noodle pieces evenly over the meat. Gently pour the diced tomatoes with their added water and tomato sauce over the pasta. Cover and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to simmer, until the pasta is tender, about 20 minutes. You may peek! If any noodles are sticking out too far, push them back under. (The sauce should look watery after 15 minutes of cooking. If dry, add up to ¼ cup additional water to loosen the sauce.)

Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in spinach and ½ cup Parmesan. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Dot heaping tablespoons of ricotta over the noodles. Cover the skillet and let stand off the heat for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with the basil and serve with the extra Parmesan on the side.

Seasoning Options:
Add any or all of the following seasonings: ½ teaspoon dried oregano leaves (not powder); 1 teaspoon fennel seed; ½ teaspoon dried basil leaves

Mushroom variation:
Add 6 large mushrooms, sliced or diced, once the onion is softened. Continue to cook over medium-high for about five minutes more before proceeding.

Further notes:

Because I found the original seasoning to be quite plain (despite the chile flakes) I add all of the seasoning options above, which give it that really classic familiar taste. I highly recommend the fennel seeds, particularly.

I confess that I don't usually go with the ricotta cheese, though it does make the dish a little more hard-core lasagna-esque. I don't tend to have ricotta on hand, and it feels a little tacked on, to be honest. Instead, I took an idea from my mother's baked spaghetti, and lay strips of provolone over the top just after stirring the spinach through, and covering until the cheese is melted (as shown above).

Finally, if you suddenly discover that you don't have that box of lasagna noodles that you thought you had, 200 grams of farfalle work beautifully in the dish, although the overall effect as a "lasagna" is kind of shot, at that point.

Salmon Corn Chowder

As promised.

This is the first fish dish that I ever became delighted to make again. Fish and I, we have issues (if not whole subscriptions). I cobbled the recipe together out of other recipes when I was still in University, and always on the lookout for affordable food with a big flavour payoff.

Living in Vancouver, salmon is probably more affordable to me than to folks further inland, so it might not be such a budget stretcher for people in, oh, say, the prairies. The recipe works best with a freshly steamed salmon fillet - even - a small one will do, but you can also used good quality pouch salmon, or Indian-style smoked salmon (as opposed to, say, lox, which wouldn't work so well). You don't need a lot of salmon to make a big, tasty pot of soup, though. The photo above does not show the tarragon, because I am an idiot who forgot to pick some up on my way home from work, and therefore did without. It was still tasty, by my gods, the tarragon adds something good. I added a big sprig of fresh thyme instead, which was pretty good.

Salmon Corn Chowder

Total Prep and Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Serves: 4 to 6

1 large onion, diced medium
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 leek, chopped (or a rib of celery will do)
1 14 oz./400 ml can of creamed corn
1 to 1 1/2 cups corn kernels, frozen or fresh-cut
2 diced waxy potatoes (such as red bliss)
2 medium carrots, diced
1 small salmon fillet, steamed and flaked into chunks
1 14 oz./400 ml can of evaporated milk
1 cup water
salt
pepper
1 bayleaf
fresh tarragon to taste (go easy, it's strong)
olive oil for sauteing

If you're a soup-maker, you probably don't need more than the list above, to work it out. If not, try these directions:

In a large soup pot, heat a little olive oil and saute the onion, garlic, carrot, and leek/celery until barely translucent. Toss in the bayleaf, a small pinch of salt, a little pepper, and the corn kernels and stir about. Add the creamed corn, the potatoes and the evaporated milk, and stir gently but thoroughly. Add water to get to the consistency you like - around a cup to start. Bring the soup to a gentle simmer, and allow to cook gently, uncovered, for about ten or fifteen minutes. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed - I like white pepper for making the soup itself, and black pepper as a serving garnish, but suit yourself.

As the potatoes cook through, they will release a little starch and thicken the chowder slightly. It is important to use a waxy potato, because the floury, baking kind will become mealy-textured in the finished soup. If you decide to make this with all fresh corn, you may want to puree some of it before adding to the soup, to get the texture and level of, er, "corniness" correct.

When the vegetables are tender and just cooked through, add the small chunks of salmon, and a tablespoon or two of fresh, finely chopped tarragon leaves. Let the soup continue to cook gently for another five minutes, taste for salt, and serve with crackers (the classic pairing) or hot biscuits (my favourite). Contemplate other chowders you could make...bacon and scallops? Chicken and chorizo? The many faces of clam chowder (New England, Rhode Island, Manhattan)? Potato and cheese? Start making a list.

Soup for the New Year (Simple Tomato Soup)

It's official: I'm on a soup jag.

Today's soup is Alphabet Vegetable. It is the product of my Simple Tomato Soup (expired link removed - see recipe in comments section below) merged with extra chopped vegetables (this version includes finely chopped celery, carrot, red bell pepper, and corn kernels) and alphabet pasta, along with extra water to be absorbed by the pasta. I showered the bowls with chopped parsley, after the photo was taken, because I though all of the green bits would obscure the actual pasta.

The alphabet pasta was found at Granville Island, after a long, futile search in the supermarkets of Vancouver (well, I found some vegetable-dyed whole wheat alphabets, but they looked vile; I am not a fan of whole wheat pasta), and turns out to be alphanumeric, actually. I don't know if this is standard or not, since I never had alphabet soup growing up, but the numbers are a bonus, I think.

Adding stuff to my soup increased the cooking time by about ten minutes - the extras were all added post original recipe - which meant that the veggies still had some texture. Essentially, it is the variation for Tomato Vegetable that is listed at the end of the recipe, plus a half-cup of alphabet pasta and an extra cup of water. If you like the granular mushiness of canned vegetable soup, you might want to add another fifteen minutes (or more) to obtain the level of mush you desire. You may, of course, use any vegetables you want, including potato, parsnip, peas, lima beans...

We had this for dinner last night with toasted cheese sandwiches (i.e. not grilled, per se), and extra crusty bread for mopping the bowls clean.

Soup is such comforting food, and really lovely for the vertical weather we've been experiencing. So many of them also keep well for second days, lunches, or freezer-treasure. Next soup I've set my sights on? Salmon Corn Chowder. Stay tuned.

Soup for the Holidays

I am supposed to be in Mexico, right now. However, despite heroic attempts by friend and stranger alike, my holiday in the Yucatan has been canceled. The weather did us in. We managed to get as far as on the plane in Seattle, only to be told that they were out of de-icer and the flight was delayed (which soon became canceled). Most flights were canceled from Sea-Tac airport that day, and many more the next. The list of people awaiting standby opportunities was staggering and, with the knowledge that we couldn't possibly get a new flight for a week, we gave up on the whole trip.

So, shivering in our warm-weather clothes, we struggled home to Canada on a bus, where we have not prepared for Christmas, at all.

The amount of snow around these parts is quite shocking. We're accustomed to mild winters, and despite the occasional Big Dump of Snow, it usually melts quickly and returns us to our regularly scheduled program of wet slush, damp puddles, and snarled traffic.

So, what better way to warm up than soup? And, what better soup to warm up with than one that takes so very few ingredients to make such a comforting dish? We darted out into the snow to secure a few essential provisions, and the soup practically made itself when we returned.

Split Pea Soup

400 g. dried green split peas, rinsed and drained
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 medium onion, diced small
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk of celery, diced small
6 cups water
1 teaspoon vegetable stock concentrate
1 large carrot, diced small
2 cups diced ham
dash kosher salt
white pepper to taste
1 bay leaf
dash dry white vermouth
dash Tabasco sauce

In a large soup-making pot, heat the olive oil and add the onion, garlic, celery, bay leaf and a dash of salt. Allow the veggies to sweat a little, and turn translucent. Add a good dash of white pepper, a splash of vermouth (or water) to free them up from sticking. Add the washed split peas, and the water. Bring to a simmer, and add the concentrate (optional, really, or you could use veggie stock instead of some of the water). Bring to a simmer and let cook at a gentle bubble, for about an hour or until the peas are starting to fall apart.

Remove the bay leaf, and use an immersion blender to mostly-smooth out the soup. Add the diced carrots and the ham, and return soup to a gentle simmer for about twenty minutes (or until carrot pieces are tender and ham is warmed through. Add a dash of Tabasco sauce (or sherry vinegar, if you prefer, just a tiny bit, for brightness), stir through, and serve with a big old crusty bread and maybe some good cheese.

If you have leftovers, like most hearty soups, this one freezes really well. You can double the carrots and leave the ham out if you want a vegan version (although, I would recommend adding a drop or two of liquid smoke, if that's the case). Do resist the temptation to add all kinds of crazy herbs and spices. This soup just doesn't need them.

Roast Pork Shoulder

There isn't much about the pig that I don't like, culinarily speaking. I'm a huge fan of pork tenderloin, which is about as low-maintenance a piece of meat as you can find - tender, lean, boneless, and I'm very fond of ham dinners, as well - preferably from a nice, country-cured red ham, but I'll take an Alton Brown-style city ham with gingerbread crust, too. However, while I do pork chops, tenderloin, ribs, ham, and all manner of sausage (and I've roasted a pork loin or two), I've never really tried my hand at the classic Roast Pork. I recently decided that it was high time I did.

If there is a culture that is pre-disposed towards expertise in the roasting of pork, it is Cuba. Roast pork sandwiches are a national dish, after all - either as "cubanos" or the smaller, snacktacular "medianoches". Where does the pork come from for these ubiquitous favourites? From a nice, seasoned roasted pork shoulder. The Cubans call it "pernil".

Start with a lesson from the best, I say!

I staggered back from the grocery store with a whopping (to me) 5.5 lb. boneless pork shoulder roast, and proceeded to do the following:

Cut some deep, short cuts into the roast (think shallow stabs with a pointy carving knife). Slather thoroughly with marinade, allow to rest, covered, at room temperature (but in a sealed environment, in this case my cold microwave) for three hours, then roast fatty-side up in a 350 F. oven for 3 hours (covered with tinfoil), uncover, remove juices to make gravy, and roast at 400 F. for another half-hour until dark golden brown. The internal temperature for those counting such things, was 170 F., which co-incidentally is the "pork/veal" setting on my probe thermometer. Allow to stand for fifteen minutes before roasting - which gives you more than enough time to make gravy.

And do, please do, bother to make gravy. A little roux, a little wine, about half of the juices from the pork, and a little water is all you need - no further seasoning required. Not only is it lovely on the black beans and rice that you should be serving with this, it makes an excellent medium for re-heating slices of pork for dinner the following day (assuming, of course, that it isn't all going to be et at once, or saved for cold sandwiches).

The pork was meltingly tender, thoroughly seasoned, and wonderfully flavourful - and possibly, even better the next day, re-heated in its gravy.

I should mention that classic pernil is made with a shoulder that is skin-on, to give a wonderful crackling, but that option was not available to me.

Here is the marinade:

4 cloves garlic
5 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 handful fresh oregano leaves

All pounded to a smooth grey-green paste in the mortar & pestle, to which is then added: 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, and 3 tablespoons vegetable oil.

This definitely requires an encore performance, and soon! Because it serves a lot of people, it would be perfect for a casual dinner gathering, so that might be just the thing.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Granola

I know that I may be getting a little bit repetitive. I'm guilty of kicks, jags, and culinary obsessions, and I make little effort to get over it. But, when faced with the need for more granola to make it through my workday mornings, I thought...why not add chocolate and peanut butter to it?

Oh, yeah.

Essentially, that's exactly what I did. I took the recipe for Pirate Granola, and used a half-cup of smooth organic peanut butter instead of a quarter-cup oil. Then I sprinkled it fairly liberally with Cocoa Camino's organic dark cocoa powder, and let it ride. My regular granola is a lot less sweet than most versions that I've tried, and since I didn't add extra sugar for this version, it's about as non-sweet as you can anywhere. My co-workers pronounced it suitable for sprinkling on yoghurt, but I just eat it by the handful, while I work.

When I was looking at various recipes for chocolate granola, I considered Nigella's. She suggests that raisins have no business in a chocolate granola, and having flouted her advice, I suspect she's actually right. When I make this again, in oh, say, three or four granola-cycles from now, I will omit the raisins. I may, in fact, opt for whole peanuts instead of my favourite almonds, just to heighten the whole peanut-factor. We shall see - my granola making does tend to be a bit mood-driven (not to mention what's-in-the-cupboard driven).

I did notice that this version of granola had more clusters than my Pirate Granola, which I suspect is a function of peanut butter's inherent stickiness. Clearly, more research is required.

Vegetarian Pizzas

I don't have any revelations about vegetarian pizza, really. I haven't found some new, hitherto undiscovered topping that requires me to shout from the rooftops. I've just been reminded that sometimes the simple things are really, really good.

The pizza above has those most classic of vegetarian pizza toppings: artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, good black olives, and cheese (in this case, a nice Monterey Jack), and a slightly spicy, garlicky tomato sauce. I refrained from adding more and more and more toppings, which used to be my pizza downfall, and let the combined flavours hum along in harmony.

The pizza below, is a very, very simple pie based on my memories of post-nightclubbing slices devoured at a long-departed establishment that stayed open until 3:00am downtown. The deceptively simple pesto pizza. Really, all you need is a good, home-made crust (expired link removed, please see comments below for recipe), and a good, home-made pesto, and the cheese of your choice. No tomatoes. No chunky bits. Just you and the pesto and the crust. For cheese, I opted to use some of the Jack (as above), and some parmesan, which is simply a component of the pesto. You don't need a lot of cheese - and you will need to shore up the edges of your crust a little to avoid spill-age if your crusts get any oven-spring lift to them. Just smear the pesto on, sprinkle the cheese, and ignore the pang of sadness that you feel when the beautifully bright pesto turns dark, olivey green from the heat of the oven.

I've learned a thing or three about pizza crust, in the years that I've been, ahem, studying.

1) Don't add too much flour. A looser dough has better texture
2) It doesn't matter if you forget to add salt to the crust, just sprinkle a little on the dough before you add the toppings (or use salty toppings, like feta).
3) The longer and slower the rise, the better the crust - airy, chewy, complex and delicious.

The two pizzas above were made with a batch of dough that was stirred up just before heading out to meet some friends for drinks. I only used a small amount of yeast (1 teaspoon for a double batch of dough, whereas many recipes - including my master recipe - use up to a tablespoon per pie). Three hours, on the counter, later, the dough was well-risen, soft, pliable, and ready to be stretched into shape. I can actually toss pizza crust, but generally I just pat it back and forth in my hands, like a chapatti, until it is big and round, and then flop it on a cornmeal-lined pizza pan and finish pressing it out to the edge.

I'm definitely going to try the low-yeast, slow rise thing again - it has wonderful schedule flexibility potential, and I feel the urge to experiment a little. Next time, maybe some other classics: pepperoni mushroom, perhaps (always a favourite), spinach and feta, or my personal guilty-pleasure - the cheeseburger pizza.

A Soup For All Seasons: Borscht

I had just about given up on summer. Before this glorious September sneaked up on us, I was frantically soaking up as much sunshine and warmth as I could, trying to store it up for the depths of December, when I would most miss it. I started, as the weather started to turn to wet, to make soup.

Borscht is one of those dishes that engenders strong opinions in its adherents. Should it be beets alone, or with cabbage? Should there be meat stock, or should it be vegetarian? Carrots? Do you add wine, or just vinegar? Should it be hearty, a meal in itself, or a starter for cabbage rolls, pyrohy, and sausage? Should it be hot or cold? Chunky, or smooth? Truth is, you can serve it any way you like. Cold and pureed in the summer, hot and chunky in the autumn and winter, clear, spare and delicate in the spring. There isn't a season that doesn't have its borscht.

The funny thing is, most folks who acknowledge their love of a good bowl of borscht like the variations just fine...they simply may not consider them to be proper. You know, the grail borscht, the standard from which all others are merely delicious anomalies.

My favourite version comes from Diane Forley's lovely work Anatomy of a Dish which is required reading for the botanically inclined cook. I haven't altered it much at all, going with the full cup of red wine and full cup of red wine vinegar, but I've cut the sugar down to a lean 1 tablespoon, whilst she allows (gasp!) as much as 2/3 of a cup, which I think is the short train to crazyville. Beets, especially roasted ones, are quite sweet enough. However, she gets my big seal of approval for eliminating much of the tedium of borscht making - she doesn't grate or chop the raw beets. She roasts them, skin and all, and when they are done you can simply slip the skins right off. If you have roasted them a little more al dente, so to speak, you may need to grasp the roasted (and cooled) beet in a clean cloth, such as a washable jaycloth, and briskly rub to remove the skins. I do so under running cool water, which minimizes any potential mess. It is marvelously easy - and has less waste than using a vegetable peeler.

I also note that Forley suggests that this recipe serves 8. What she doesn't mention, is that this would be eight starving farmhands. If you're simply serving it as a generous appetizer, it would easily serve 20. It's a lot of soup. My freezer is now full of it, in fact. But, really, there's no sense in making a tiny pot of borscht. Go big, and dine off it for a couple of months.

Borscht
adapted from Anatomy of A Dish, by Diane Forley

Serves 8 (farmhands).

1½ lbs. baby beets, roasted, peeled and diced
2 onions, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
¼ head red cabbage, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups chicken stock
4 cups water
1 cup red wine
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of fresh thyme
1 waxy potato, diced (Forley recommends a russet, but I find them too mealy)

To roast the beets, seal them in a foil pouch with a spritz of olive oil, and roast at 400° F for approximately 1 hour, or until a knife slides easily into one. Remove, allow to cool for fifteen minutes, and rub the skins off under cool water. Dice and set aside.

In a large Dutch oven, sauté the onion, carrot, celery and cabbage in the olive oil with a little salt and pepper until vegetables soften and become translucent. Add the diced beets, stock, water, spices/seasonings, sugar, wine and wine vinegar. Bring to a gentle simmer and allow to cook for 15 minutes. Add the potato and allow to cook for another 15 minutes. Taste, re-season as necessary, and serve. If you're a fan of dill, sprinkle some over each bowl, but it certainly doesn't need it.

A note on dicing: beets do not shrink down, so dice them to the size you want to find in your spoon, when you are eating.

Last Rays of Sunshine (Paella with Tomatoes)

It has not been a stellar summer, here in the permanently damp Pacific Northwest. August, usually our go-to month for griping about the heat and languishing over drinks on patios about town, has been a disappointment most of the way through. So, now that the sun has come out again, however briefly, and given that it's the end of August, it seemed like a good idea to go for a dish that in itself evokes sun-drenched days and summer lassitude. I'm talking paella.

I have never made paella before. It's one of those dishes that seems a bit scary, all fraught with rules, and despite having spent a couple of weeks in Spain, I'm not as familiar with Spanish cuisine as I might be. It's not a well-represented style, around here. However, I do remember from my travels that I encountered many a diverse dish that all claimed to be a type of paella, which encouraged me that there are a variety of acceptable variations - and probably some devious restaurateurs who will call anything made with rice a paella to get some tourist dollars.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the dish that I made would probably properly be designed an "arroz" in Spain, because a) the pan it was made in (not a proper paella pan, simply a big ol' non-stick skillet) and b) much of the cooking time is spend in the oven. Not, therefore officially paella, even though its oven-time was uncovered, to allow the dish to roast, as opposed to steam.

The recipe I chose to take a whack at is none other than Mark Bittman's Paella with Tomatoes. It promised to be fairly quick and painless, and that is exactly what I was looking for. However, since I wasn't serving vegetarians, I decided to meat-it-up a little. My brief search for serrano ham was unfruitful, so I settled for thick-cut lean prosciutto, which I then cut into matchsticks (or rather, Palle cut into matchsticks, since cutting anything is hard for me these days), and rounded it out with a half-pound of large, raw prawns. I also added some sliced green olives (which had been stuffed with garlic, yum) because the flavours just seemed to go.

Other than that, I followed the linked-above recipe fairly closely. I added the matchsticks of ham with the onions, I tossed the sliced olives with the raw tomato wedges (heirloom tomatoes, an orange brandywine type and a green zebra), and I added the peeled prawns to the top of the pan when it had just seven minutes left to go in the oven. The only real divergence from the recipe methodology was to add the saffron to the warmed veggie stock, as opposed to simply plunking it in with the tomato paste.

I learned a few useful things:

One, I used too much saffron. My version of a large pinch may have been just a smidge too large. It didn't render it inedible, or even unenjoyable, but for future reference, a medium pinch would be better. There is a very slight bitterness to saffron, which becomes exacerbated when used in too-great a quantity. A little goes a long way.

Two, I should have tossed the shrimp with a little of the olive oil and maybe a dab of paprika, before adding them to the pan. While they were plump and delicious, they did sit on top looking a bit like an after-thought. A little pre-emptive anointing would have taken care of that beautifully. When I was in Spain, the prawns that arrived on a paella were inevitably in head-on fashion, but I wanted this to be simple to eat. If I had left the prawns at least in their shells, however, I could have added them with the tomato layer at the beginning of the oven time, and they would have integrated into the dish a bit more.

Three, while heirloom tomatoes make a very sexy salad, there's something unsettling about green tomatoes coming out of the oven. Not a huge objection, but I found myself thinking that red tomatoes might have been more beautiful.

Four, the quality of the olives counts. Enough said.

Five, the slightly caramelized roasted tomatoes were fantastic. I wouldn't dare try this with insipid supermarket orbs.

With all of those things in mind, it is really only a matter of time before I make this again, incorporating my new-found experience and, since it produces such a lot of food, maybe even for guests.