My Day Out at Sea

I’ve wanted to go clamming and crabbing for as long as I can remember. I asked my dad to take me every summer and for one reason or another, we never got the chance to go. So I feel pretty damn lucky to be living with a guy who was totally down to go.

We were sitting on the couch staring at each other yesterday morning throwing around ideas for things to do and the option of clamming was thrown on the table. The only thing with clamming, though, is that you have to go during low tide or else you’ll have a terrible time trying to rake and dig in the mud. Luckily for us, low tide was at noon. So we hopped in the car, went to Benny’s to get ourselves a clamming rake and, along with John’s best friend Steve, headed to Oakland Beach for the day.

Our digging field at Oakland Beach

I’m glad it was slightly overcast, because there was  no way I would have enjoyed it anywhere near as much as I did if the sun was shining on us all day.

I won’t lie, though. It took us a looong time to get into a groove. Because we’ve never dug for clams before, we weren’t sure what spots were the best or what the tell-tale signs of clams are. (Come to find out, after extensive YouTube research, John found out that holes in the sand, bubbles rising from the sand or squirts of water = jackpot). We also brought along the crabbing cage that my brother gave me for my birthday baited with a raw chicken leg; but the only thing we caught was a crab the size of a dime. Clearly not big enough to take home….

We made sure to keep our catch within the Rhode Island shellfishing regulations; and even with that, we ended up with a nice handful.  Though we didn’t end up getting as much as we would have liked to, I feel pretty accomplished…and I must say, they tasted pretty damn good fresh off the grill too. 🙂

Not bad for our first time out.

I’ve always been a marine nerd, so digging for clams was definitely my kind of beach day. I’m a happy girl.

Paella – My Version!

So John and I have become couponers because we practically live at the grocery store. That being said, we were able to hit some pretty nice deals on seafood this week; and because I still had my homemade chorizo still sitting in the fridge that I had made the day before, I decided to take a big risk and attempt paella.

Now, for those of you who are not familiar, paella is a Spanish rice dish that is often adorned with chicken, seafood and peas – but I ABSOLUTELY HATE peas, so I opted to leave them out. (No really. I won’t even touch a dish that has peas in it…even if they’ve been removed for my sake. I’ll know they were there).

John and I are pretty big fans of Tyler Florence, so we chose to use his recipe as the main guideline for this and made a few changes along the way to better serve our needs with the ingredients that we had. Our recipe called for:

• 4 cups of short grain rice
• 6 cups of water (we chose to use chicken stock for added flavor)
• 2 large chicken thighs cut in half – skin on
• 1 pound chorizo
• 1 pound cherry stone clams
• 1 pound large peeled and cleaned shrimp
• 1 pound rock crab claws
•  1 tablespoon dried cilantro (most of the time it will call for parsley)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 can crushed tomatoes
• 1 Spanish onion, diced
• 5 cloves of garlic, crushed (I left them as large chunks because we love garlic, here)
• 1 teaspoon turmeric (because the price of Saffron is just outrageous)
• 1 lime cut into wedges
• 1 teaspoon paprika (to season the chicken)
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano (to season the chicken)
• salt & pepper to taste

Now, this is quite an expensive dish to make and if John and I hadn’t hit the sales that we did, I probably wouldn’t have tried it.

Step 1:

In a paella pan or large shallow skillet (we used the latter, as we don’t have a paella pan…yet) add the 1/4 cup olive oil and saute the chorizo over medium-high heat. Once cooked through, remove and set aside.

Cooked Chorizo

Step 2:

In the same skillet, brown the chicken – skin side down first. Once you have a nice crust on both sides, remove and set aside.

See the nice golden crust?

Step 3:

Again, in the same skillet saute your onions, garlic and cilantro (or parsley, if that’s what you prefer) until they are nice and tender. Then add the tomatoes.

Delicious paella juice, as I call it.

Step 4:

Fold in the rice so each grain is coated in the juice and pour in your 6 cups of warm water or stock – let simmer.

Every now and then, make sure you GENTLY stir the rice mixture so nothing ends up sticking to the bottom. Later on you might notice some sticking, which is fine – that part is quite yummy – but you don’t want any stickage right now.

Step 5:

Once the rice has soaked up the liquid and has swelled and become somewhat fluffy, add the chicken back into the pan. I tried burying my chicken pieces a little bit, so they had a better chance of cooking through. This is also a good time to add your chorizo back to the pan as well.

Step 6:

Add your seafood to the pan. Shrimp will usually take between 7-10 minutes to cook through. Clams even less but because we didn’t have a proper paella pan, our skillet was a bit over-crowded, causing the cooking time to extend. We actually had to pull the seafood out and steam in a separate pan so they would all cook through. The crab claws we pre-cooked, so we were essentially just warming them through and letting them take on the flavor of the paella juice.

**NOTE: At this point you do not want to stir your paella – this will cause the rice and fish to not cook properly. Let it sit. This is when you’ll start to notice some rice creating nice, yummy crispy bits at the bottom of your pan.**

Step 7:

Once everything is cooked through, remove from the heat and let sit for a few minutes. Garnish with lemon or lime wedges (we also used a handful of chopped green onion).

Step 8:

Eat!

Ta Da! This was so big it needed an aerial shot.

 

Now, if I had thought this through instead of just jumping right in, I would’ve cut this recipe in half – maybe even more than that – because when all was said and done, we had enough food for about eight people.

We’ll have leftovers for days!!

Thanks for reading, stay tuned for my next delicious recipe!