Paella and Rioja as a Pairing

Hubby and I have actually made paella from scratch occasionally, although we don’t have the cool specialty pan for it. More often though we use the mix and oddly enough, the store didn’t have either the Goya or Vigo brands that we like. Not that I don’t have faith in McCormick – we just prefer the idea of a Puerto Rican or Spanish brand. We do have a friend who is a paella expert and would probably cringe at the thought of a box. He has multiple size pans and if I remember correctly, he once did a paella party for sixty people.

The idea of this dish though got me to thinking of the Cajun version which is jambalaya, the similarity of risotto where you can use it as a side or main dish, and I’m not certain of which other cuisines have the same type of dish. We usually prepare paella with chorizo, chicken, and shrimp, but we vary that depending on if we have leftover grilled pork for example, picked up an extra lobster tail, or I tell my husband to go ahead and add mussels or clams that I can pick out. Both the Goya and Vigo mixes come with a can of seafood that I refer to as “yucky”, since it has chunks of clam, calamari, and octopus as well as tiny shrimp. He will often set that can aside and save it for one of the times when I am gone, thereby having double the amount of what he likes and I don’t have to deal with it.

As you can see from the photo, we’ll have a Spanish Rioja with the dish, a wine that we find as a good pairing.