Paella party

Eastside Road, August 31, 2014—

EVERY SUMMER WE TRY to have the pastry crew from the restaurant — by which I always mean Chez Panisse — up for a patio party. We don’t manage to get to it every year. We missed last year, for example. This year we were determined not to miss it — it’s just too much fun. So today we had eighteen at table, the big teak table out on the patio, not big enough in truth but I didn’t hear any complaints about crowding.

It’s a lot of work getting the place ready, so we generally farm out the actual cooking. It helps that one of the pastry chefs (there are two, just as there are two restaurant chefs, and two in the café) is married to a chef who specializes these days in catering. It also helps that Curt’s a dear friend, whose instinctive (and educated) palate and interests parallel our own…

He brought a lot of the marvelous toasted almonds he makes, and cherry tomatoes, and padrones, to nibble on while he cooked the main course.

A professional understands miss en place, the carefully organized setting out of all the "prepped" ingredients that will go into a course of any complexity. Here in our coffee bowls you see chopped parsley, flageolets, diced ham, minced onions, the rice, and those delicious little green beans that make his paella uniquely good.

Mary Jo decorated the table, using pine cones and bay leaves, rosemary, figs, pears, and grapes from the garden. And, thankfully, she took most of these photos, because I was too busy enjoying myself to give the matter any thought at all.

The paellas cooked over charcoal — a shrimp and mussel one for everyone but me; a delicious rabbit and clam one for me.

Lindsey made natillas for dessert — a soft custard flavored with cinnamon, very Spanish, just right after this meal. It was a great party. The pastry crew is impressive: chefs and cooks who have fascinating experience at the restaurant and in their own lives; they've travelled; they're artistic; they read interesting books; they live life fully, with great enthusiasm and discernment. Hard to imagine a more rewarding bunch of people to spend an afternoon and evening with, on a perfect late-summer day!


Curt and your blogger

White: Ressò, Garnacha blanca (Catalunya), 2011 (soft and pleasant); rosé: Côtes du Rhône, La Manarine, 2013