- Chef Jamie Bissonnette from Toro NYC, thanks for having us. - What's up brother? - Not too much man, how are you? - Great, thanks for coming in. - So what's on the menu for today? - [Jamie] I love cooking paella, so we're gonna make some paella. - [Patrick] Perfect. (energetic rock music) Let's pretend I don't know what paella is. You know, not that there's a possibility. - I've gone out to eat with you, I'm pretty sure you don't.
(laughter) So paella is like the
best fusion food ever. The Romans brought steel
and the Moors brought rice to the southern part of
Spain and this dish was born. That's what we're gonna make today. - Cool. So what's the first step? - First step is getting a paella pan. It's gotta be nice, heavy-bottomed, that way we're gonna develop
that burned part of the rice at the bottom, called the socarrat. Then we're gonna load it
up with a ton of olive oil. You can add a little bit of chorizo. So we're just gonna let it render out, we're gonna have to dice up some stuff. You mind cutting up that pepper for me? - I would love to, that's great. You want me to dice it? - Whatever you can, yeah. (laughter) However you think is
appropriate, go for it. - I always get really
nervous whenever I cook in front of chefs, I just
mainly feel like they think that I'm taking way too long,
and I feel like you think that right now looking at me. (laughs) - Half the pepper's fine, I don't think that we wanna be here all day. - Alright. (laughs) - So we're just gonna throw
the pepper in with the chorizo. - [Patrick] Awesome, that's great. - And we've got some garlic here, and I'm just going to take
the stem off the garlic, we already peeled it. We're just gonna smash it and then just run our knife through it. - [Patrick] Awesome. - 'Cause I like chunks. You can add that in. You wanna take these
scallions, cut off the stems and throw them right in. You could even cut them bigger. - [Patrick] Bigger than that? - Yeah.
- Awesome. - And I'm going up just to where it starts getting a little green?
- Just where it turns color. - Save the tops 'cause we're
gonna use that for garnish. So take all the things that you've cut, throw it right in the pan. - [Patrick] Even the white stuff? - [Jamie] Everything, everything. - Alright, yeah. It smells great. You can really smell the chorizo, the aromatics coming right out of it. - And there's so much
of that smoked paprika and that fermented pork to it. So one of the things I do,
they're just white onions cooked with salt and olive oil. And we add them to the pan now. So we're gonna take some
chicken thighs we diced up and you wanna season that
with a little bit of salt, there's a pepper grinder right there. - Yeah, it's easy to do from high up, that way--
- High and all over the place, - so it falls like snow. - [Patrick] Perfect. - The more you get on the table, probably the better you're doing. (laughter) That looks good, yeah yeah. - Yeah, that's good? Okay. And then some pepper, same thing? - That's good. Now we'll flip that in, kinda sear that. Let it cover the fat. - And then with chicken,
obviously you wanna make sure it's cooked through here,
but you're gonna keep going. So it's not about getting that
cooked all the way through right away, because it's
gonna simmer for a long time. - I just wanna get it covered in the fat, so as it cooks, sears a little bit but it's gonna braise with the rice. - Yeah. - So we've got some
sofrito, and we make this out of tomatoes, when we just cook it down with olive oil and onion until it turns to a little bit more like vibrant red. So now we have the calasparra rice. This is a short-grain
rice, here, take a look. That's the only rice you
can really use for paella. It's gotta be calasparra or bomba. We keep adding stuff, we wanna make sure that we don't add too
many things all in a row, otherwise we'll cool the temperature of the pan down too much. - Interesting. - The rice is in, we've coated
the rice with everything, we want the pan to come
back up to being super hot, and we're gonna pour
in, we have our stock. We already measured, it's four to one. So four parts stock to one part rice. We're gonna take our spoon,
we're gonna knock down the sides but we're not going to stir it
after we've added the liquid. - So ideally all the
rice is in the bottom, all the ingredients and
the liquid are on the top, and now the rice is starting to cook. - The rice is gonna start to cook, the more you stir it, the
more starch that comes out, and the more it's gonna burn in a bad way. You just wanna keep moving the pan around for the hot spots. - Ah, so is this the
reason why paella pans have the two handles on them? - Yeah, everybody cooking paella in Spain in the summertime, they
have no hair on their legs from the knees down and burns all over it, because they're standing in
front of that fire all day long and you're just kind of moving
it every couple of minutes so you get that nice, even cook. We added the clams, the
clams take the longest of the shellfish to cook. So right now we've got a little down time. - [Patrick] Okay, well, I do
have some wine for us to drink. - [Jamie] Love it. - So I brought some sherry. It's amazing how scary it is to people, like people associate it
with their grandmother or their priest or something. But being that you cook
so much Spanish food, that something like this,
light, fresh, right? And awesome with seafood and chicken. (cork pops) That's it, we're ready to go.
- Perfect. - So this is Manzanilla,
one of the driest styles that you will get. Hidalgo, a pretty traditional producer. La Gitana is this
particular wine from them. So, cheers man. - [Jamie] Cheers.
(glasses clink) - To drinking sherry and
cooking paella. (laughs) - Yeah, I can't ask for
much better of a day. - Agreed. I love that. For me, I love the
saltiness with these wines. But it has a good richness
too, it's really balanced. It's not a sweet wine but you can tell that it's gonna have some
density and some richness to it, which I think, a complex a
dish as this, you need that. - [Jamie] Oh definitely. - What's going on over here,
is everything alright or what? - Yeah everything looks pretty good, just keep moving the pan, making
sure it's got even contact, shake it every once in
a while, you can see where it's sticking, where
it's not, if it's sticking. - [Patrick] Yeah, you can see now, it's getting really thick. - Just making sure we're not
getting any premature socarrat. - I hate premature socarrat. (laughs) - But it happens to everyone. - [Patrick] It does happen, doesn't mean I'm less of a man, right? (laughs) - Not at all, not at all. We'll add some mussels now. You wanna chop the scallions or you want me to do them?
- Yeah yeah, I can. - See I'm kinda doing
it, I'm just not doing it as fast as you, that's what I find. - You're doing okay. Just push across and let the knife, see how much the knife is doing the work? See how before you were breaking them, they were turning brown and
there's a little bit of wetness, and over here they're nice and dry? - (laughs) You told me
how good I was doing, why are you lying to me man? (laughs) - [Jamie] You're doing well,
but you can always do better. - Yeah, this is way
better, I got most of them. - [Jamie] We're gonna
throw our gambas in now. - Alright, and those are just raw shrimp? - [Jamie] Yeah, I marinated
them with a little olive oil and cascabel chilies. - It really is starting to smell great. The change in the last
minute or two, you can smell that flavor that I kind
of associate with paella. - [Jamie] A hundred percent. You can see right here,
there's that socarrat that's starting to develop. - [Patrick] Yeah, it looks amazing. - Keep adding a little bit
of liquid in the center where it evaporates the fastest. That'll help cook that clam open. Gonna throw some of the scallions on top. Another thing about paella,
people look for that socarrat right away, you've got to let it cool off. - So letting it rest, like
you would if you were cooking a piece of meat, same sort of thing. - Then we've got some
nice arbequina olive oil, to finish it off. - [Patrick] Great. So we should check my pairing? - See how you did? - Yeah. - [Jamie] Alright. Yeah, so you see that right here? That's that nice socarrat. - [Patrick] Yeah, that's the money. That's the money shot right there. - [Jamie] Give you a little bit. - That's great. - A little bit of socarrat. A little chorizo. - Oh yeah. The texture's perfect. This is great, oh my god. It's so awesome, those
crunchy bits, for sure, they add so much texture to it. - [Jamie] It's got a
crunch from that socarrat. - This is amazing, and as always, so much fun to hang out with you. - The pleasure is mine. - I look forward to more
of this in the future. (glasses clink) Cheers man.
