I’m confident in the kitchen, but there are a few dishes I’ve never considered making at home. Always up for a challenge, last month I gave myself one that seemed doubly hard: I would cook not one but two difficult dishes — the sort that I thought you could get only at a restaurant — for the first time. And I would do it for a dinner party.
First up, at least in terms of preparation: baked Alaska. It’s really just a fancy ice cream cake, but it’s filled with drama that culminates with approaching the guests around your table bearing a glistening white dome of French meringue, accented with charred peaks because you’ve just pulled an ice cream cake from a 500-degree oven. Baked Alaska uses seven ingredients, six of them purchased, and it takes about 24 hours to make. What? Who has the time? Who has the patience? And is it worth the effort? I was about to find out.
According to lore, baked Alaska debuted in 1867 at Antoine’s restaurant in New Orleans. Chef-owner Antoine Alciatore created it as a celebration of the recent acquisition of the new territory of Alaska by the U.S. from the Russian Empire. Finding a recipe I wanted to use was easier than I thought — there it was, on the Food Network app on my phone. It even had a video.
It’s not complicated, just a blending of two ice cream flavors, plus sorbet, cookie crumbs, store-bought pound cake and a meringue finish. I had never made meringue before and thought it would be tricky. It turned out, just like the rest of the recipe, that you simply have to be patient.
The evening started with paella Valenciana.
I studied Spanish in school and have visited Spain several times, for work and pleasure. While there, I became enamored of paella Valenciana. A rice-based dish originating from the coastal city of Valencia, where fresh seafood and meat are abundant, it has several popular variations — some with seafood, some without; some with rabbit, a traditional main ingredient. I hunted online and found a recipe to my liking, though I knew it would need slight modification.
Paella had seemed beyond my capabilities at home, for a few reasons. First, I don’t own a paella pan, which is really just an oversized skillet, so I decided that I could use the largest skillet I do have at home. First barrier removed.
Now we have to talk about saffron, arguably an essential ingredient in paella. It not only provides deep floral notes to the dish, but it turns the rice a magnificent golden color. Finding saffron in local stores proved challenging, but I finally discovered the last bottle of the pricey, hand-picked stamens of crocus flowers at Four Seasons Natural Foods in Saratoga Springs.
I’m happy to report that, as with the baked Alaska, making paella Valenciana was really not thorny. It involved multiple steps, which, when followed in order, yielded a perfectly balanced main course and proved that I didn’t need to wait for a restaurant dinner — or a trip to Spain, as tempting as that sounds — to have it again.
For the seafood, I went to Moby Rick’s in Saratoga. Though the recipe called for three-quarters of a pound of mussels (about 18), I threw in a full pound. Who doesn’t love plump mussels poking up from steaming rice? I also bought larger shrimp than called for, at 13 to 15 per pound, knowing they would shrink a bit during cooking, and I wanted them to be prominent in the paella.
In Spain, the short-grain bomba or calasparra rices are standard in paella, but my recipe said to use Arborio, named for a town in Italy’s Po Valley. It’s also a short-grain rice, and if the Italians can use it for 200 years in risotto, why couldn’t I use it in paella?
In another change, the original recipe called for links of chorizo, the slightly spicy, piquant Spanish sausage, but I used ground chorizo from Saunder’s Farm in Greenwich, available at the Spa City Farmers Market. It may not have been traditional, but I think it helped the sausage be more evenly distributed throughout. Also nestled within were tomatoes, onions, capers and cilantro. The result was a nourishing, deeply flavored and visually impressive feast that wowed my family and friends.
We washed it down with a delicious Spanish albarino wine, using crusty bread to soak up the last of the saffrony goodness remaining in the paella pan. And then came the baked Alaska. By the look on my guests’ faces when I presented it, I knew I’d succeeded. Paella Valenciana is hard to top, but baked Alaska won the night.
Does a New Orleans-born ice cream cake named after a state 4,000 miles north make sense alongside a seafood-and-rice dish eaten in Spain for a millennium? That’s an argument for another time. What I know is that it was an outstanding, celebratory meal to punctuate the end of summer.
It also boosted my confidence as a home cook. Now here’s my challenge to you: Pick two or three dishes you have been intimidated to make at home. Invite guests. If something flops, open more wine and have a big laugh. If everything is a disaster, call for takeout. But I don’t think that will happen. And if you’re really proud of the results, send me photos. I might feature them and your story on my blog.
Ralph Elwell of Saratoga Springs writes the Ordinary Cook blog, ordinary-cook.com. You can follow him on Instagram: @ralph_the_ordinary_cook.
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