Perfect Paella For Fernando Alonso
Paella is so versatile that I'm making it again in 2024!
Welcome to Grand Prix Gastronomy! In 2024, this series is dedicated to cooking the favorite dishes of every driver on the grid.
The Foods That Fernando Alonso Loves
Back in 2017, Formula 1 asked Fernando Alonso what single food he'd eat for the rest of his life, and he responded with something pretty damn standard as far as the F1 grid goes: pizza. Since that was a pretty common answer, I decided to just dedicate one whole entire race to making pizza and went hunting for a different answer from Fernando.
His other favorite food, as cited in a Formula 1 video, is paella. Paella I can work with. Paella is different. Paella I can do.
So why didn't I schedule Fernando's paella for the Spanish Grand Prix? Well, we've got two Spanish drivers on the grid in 2024, and Carlos Sainz Jr. also selected a very Spanish food as his favorite.
I've decided to pop Fernando onto the Monaco Grand Prix instead, and for one reason: he literally skipped the race in 2017 to compete in the Indianapolis 500 instead. (Yes, this is a thinly veiled Indy-ified version of GPG!) That 2017 Indy 500 has a really special place in my heart; that May, I turned 21 years old and decided the ideal way to celebrate would be spending the entire month of May at Indy — which meant I saw the Indy Grand Prix, Indy 500 qualifying, and also the Indy 500. Not bad for a birthday trip.
Anyway, here's a photo of Fernando at Indy that I took on my bday:
This Week's Recipes
Because we made paella for Grand Prix Gastronomy last year, and because paella is one of those dishes that comes in about a thousand different forms, I decided that there would be no shame in opting for a repeat dish between 2023 and 2024. As such, I opted for a traditional Valencian paella recipe from Saveur!
While we normally associate paella with the ocean, the original dish came from landlocked Valencia. Rather than from the sea, protein came from, as Saveur says, the “orchards, gardens, and groves” around the region. As such, you're looking at a different form of protein than you may be used to: rabbit.
As far as Diverse Meats go, rabbit is very inoffensive. It can taste a little game-y, but it's honestly just a bit of a sweeter version of chicken thighs with a very slightly different texture. I ordered my rabbit online, but you can also find it in some larger grocery stores or specialty butcher shops. If you either can't find it or don't want to cook with it, then you can substitute the rabbit with chicken thighs!
Core Recipe:
Cooking Paella
I don't want to say that paella is an easy dish, because I don't think I've ever quite mastered it, but it's certainly not a huge challenge to put together. For this recipe, you start off small by toasting some saffron strands in a dry skillet before removing them and grinding them up between your fingers.
Next, cut up your chicken thighs and rabbit, then season ‘em up with salt. Heat some olive oil in a paella pan (or a large skillet) and sear the meat in the pan until it's cooked through. Then add in your green beans, followed by grated tomato and garlic. Sprinkle on some sweet paprika, then add in chicken stock, lima beans, and your saffron.
You'll want to let your broth simmer on the stove for a while — at least 20 minutes, but you can also go as long as an hour for added flavor. Make sure to give your broth a taste every now and again; season it with salt until you're happy with the flavor.
At this point, you want to evenly distribute your paella (bomba) rice throughout the pan, pressing the grains down with a wooden spoon. Drop in a sprig of rosemary and a sprig of thyme, then cook for 10 minutes over a high heat. Drop the temperature and let simmer until the rice is cooked.
Once you've pressed your grains into the cooking liquid, you want to avoid stirring your paella again in order to create the soccarat, or the crisp crust of rice that forms on the bottom of the dish. If you're using a stovetop, you'll also want to move your pan around on the heat source to make sure that all the rice is being cooked evenly. I found that I needed a little extra broth to cook all the rice, but you want to avoid whipping up a soupy paella.
After the grains are cooked through, pull the paella from the heat and let it rest for five minutes; this will give you plenty of time for the starches to firm up while you set up your table and pour up some sherry.
The Wine List
For my wine pairing this week, I decided to go for a Spanish classic: Manzanilla sherry.
Sherry is a fortified wine from Spain, and there are several different kinds that range in flavor from dry to sweet. Manzanilla and Fino sherry are made the same way — by aging Palomino white wine for two years under a flor of yeast — but differ in location. Manzanilla sherry can only be labeled Manzanilla if it's produced and aged around Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Its closer location to the ocean makes for a lighter form of sherry.
If you've never had sherry before, then I should offer a word of warning: while it's reminiscent of wine, its flavor profile is a lot different. Sherry is more savory than even the driest white wine, and it is very sharp while still being light and delicate. It's difficult to describe if you've never had it, but I will say that it's more vinegar-y than most standard wines. Manzanilla sherry is dry and fresh, with a bright lemon-pucker mouthfeel and a little bit of salty bitterness. It's how I imagine a chilled seaweed salad would taste — just a little less fishy. It has a really unique profile.
I won't say that I disliked sherry, but I won't go so far as to say I liked it, either. I enjoyed the bottle I bought enough to finish it, but I think I approached each glass more with a scientific interest and studied satisfaction than with my usual wine-drinking enjoyment. I don't know that I'd buy a bottle for myself again — but it's absolutely something I look forward to sampling in a more educated way!
So, What's The Verdict?
In a true Grand Prix Gastronomy first, my husband ranked this dish a whopping 0/10!!! He wasn't impressed with Peking duck, and he didn't like Hainanese chicken rice, but this paella was simply unredeemable.
Personally, I thought it was Fine.
The husband's primary issue here was the rabbit, I think. As soon as I bought the rabbit meat, he had lamented the fact that a poor little bunny had to die for our dinner, and it never quite recovered from there. He sampled the paella and found it too game-y for him.
I didn't have those same qualms, probably because I grew up in a place where meat was meat, and you were going to get your protein from anything that had it and could be hunted. In my eyes, the rabbit tasted a lot like the chicken thigh that was also in the dish, with a few minor textural differences. It honestly wasn't bad! I just wasn't super impressed by the overall dish.
But after my second round of being kinda “bleh” about paella, I've decided that this has to be a me issue. I do think I had better success this time around compared to last year, but I still don't think I'm preparing it in a way that gets the dish across the line. I've decided to start sampling paellas more frequently to see if I can't work backwards and figure out how to improve.
Which isn't to say that I thought this paella was bad! It was perfectly fine, but that's all it was: fine. The rice was excellent, the meat came out pretty well, the broth was flavorful, but somehow, there's just a lil somethin’ not working for me. Back to research and development!
Ready… Set… COOK!
If you’re interested in seeing the progression of Grand Prix Gastronomy, you’ll be able to do so in a few places. Instagram will feature most of the visual content, while Substack will be a little wordier. If you need a handy mid-week roundup, you’ll be able to find those on Twitter.
Here are all the relevant links in one place, if you want to subscribe:
All Grand Prix Gastronomy-related content will be free — but if you want to drop me a donation on PayPal, that’s always welcome.
Plus, if you're looking to delve deeper into motorsport history, don't forget to check out my new podcast, Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys! I have a Patreon; sign up, and you'll receive extra content!