Based on the success of the vegetable paella the week before, Laura and Molly decided to come over Monday night for a paella lesson.  Recent injuries somewhat hampered their hands-on ability for the evening, but we had a great time and everything turned out well.

The paella we chose was the next page in Penelope Casas’ cookbook.  It was an Eggplant, Olive, Anchovy and Caper Paella, the recipe shown below:

Except for leaving out the scallions (which don’t agree with Molly), we followed the recipe pretty well.  I used one of the roasted vegetable stocks I made last weekend (more about that in a forthcoming post).  Molly did a fine job of helping with the prep and taking photos as we went.

We had a variety of wines: a Fiano di Avellino, a Villa Creek Tempranillo blend (in keeping with the Spanish theme), and some of the Chianti Classico from a few nights ago. All were open; we finished the two reds with the meal.  The Fiano actually went very nicely with the first course: a cold, peppery carrot soup by Barbara, which I had taken out of the freezer a few days before, thinking it was veggie stock.  The label had not been updated, but the soup was great on a hot night — just needed to be blitzed in the Vita-Mix before serving cold.