Originally posted on 12/30/2017:

Quote Originally Posted by poolplayerjohn View Post
David,
Paella Valenciana is possibly my favorite dish, although I like any rice dish after having lived in Japan as a child. However, in cities where I have resided previously I always had to order paella 3 or 4 hours before arrival so that the restaurant could have time to prepare the meal. Do you know of any restaurants in the Las Vegas area that makes paella? I would love to get some - that picture has me salivating.
You can find several variations, including a Valenciana, at Jaleo. I am not sure they are as good as what my family puts together, but that is the difference in doing something with a lot of love behind it, as opposed to a kitchen creating something for a customer.

There is a back story behind ours. The Christmas Eve dinner is annually held at my sister's home, she and my brother-in-law having raised six children, which naturally made it the place to congregate (after many years in Maryland, this was our first in the Pacific Northwest). Often that would mean 15-20 at the dinner table, and for years I lamented how hard my sister had to work to put that meal together, and how much clean-up was involved afterwards, which isn't very festive for the hostess. Hence the idea of Paella came to mind, and about a decade ago I had a classic pan imported from Spain, and it became our tradition. To be able to turn that evening into a "one dish" affair allows her to have so much more fun (especially in making the clean up easier). One of our prime traditions is the "testing of the rice" near the end of the cooking, a select elite few being allowed to eat a mussel, and then use the shell to dip in for a scoop of rice to test for doneness. We have also found that the leftovers make a spectacular soup, which is eaten late on Christmas Day morning as another of our traditions.

As a true aficionado, you can imagine the aromas, and also the unique contrast of seeing the steam as it is being cooked outdoors on a snowy night with the temperature in the high single digits -