ERLEND'S FIRST TIME MAKING AND EATING PAELLA

A couple of days ago we bought a lot of MUSSELS. Most of it we used for a tomato and mussel pasta dish, but we had some left so we decided to make PAELLA. As many of you might have understood E is the main chef around here, while I contribute where I can ..one of those ways are with ideas. Good ideas, and this time the idea was PAELLA. We decided to go for a mixed paella with both CHICKEN, SHRIMP, CHORIZO (lately we have come to the conclusion that there seems to be few things that can not be improved by a little bit of chorizo.. a similar conclusion that others have made before us about bacon) and MUSSELS. The other ingredients were risotto rice, SAFFRON, garlic, stock from cooking the mussels, water(ideally you are not supposed to use water.. first chicken stock and then fond from the mussels, but we didn't have chicken stock and we made it on a Sunday), shallots, onion and carrot. The dish is made in a very similar way as the RISOTTO, only without the parmesan and with saffron.

Paella being a spanish dish and E being a PURIST when it comes to cooking, we of course had a spanish wine with it. About half a year ago we discovered the WHITE RIOJA from the SPANISH winemaker R. LÓPEZ DE HEREDIA. Ever since we tasted it it has been one of our favorites. E found out about it on a wineblog where the guy who had the blog described his feelings for this wine to his feelings for MEGAN FOX. Both very positive. I don't have strong feelings about Ms FOX but I do have for this wine. It is absolutely delicious. The wine smells oxidized but with a LOT of deep yellow fruits, and the taste is FRESH, but very complex with lots of ACID and MINERALS and MORE FRUIT but also OILY in the mouth and some taste of HONEY that gives a long after taste.The one we had with the paella is their VINA GRAVONIA from 1999. LÓPEZ DE HEREDIA believe their wines need a lot of time so they release all of them very late.

(I just googled Ms Fox and found this picture of her were she is both sweet, fresh, hot, sunny and oily.. maybe the wine blogger was onto something anyway..  at least I can relate to part of his parallel looking at this picture.)