Cooking

I like to cook. Now I have the time to devote to perfecting this art. This is good because several times after Jan retired she has stated that she has no desire to cook any more.
This is not to say Jan is a poor cook, actually she is a very good cook. For may years while the kids were at home she provided us with healthy and delicious meals each day, while also working a full time job. Cause that's what moms do. And she does now on occasion cook for us.
I enjoy cooking and exploring new tastes.
Lately I have been learning about paella. The Spanish rice and seafood dish that I cook on the grill outside.
A few years ago I saw José Ramón Andrés Puertaon a cooking show abut Spain. While there he visited a restaurant that served paella cooked over an open wood fire. Oh! it looked so good. I had had paella before but was not impressed, it appeared to be just fish and shrimp served over rice. But what I saw José tasting at this little Spanish restaurant near the coast of Barcelona looked amazing. There was a crispy crust of the rice along with the a brown smokiness on the shrimp. I wanted to recreate this at home.
This Christmas Santa brought me a paella pan that I could use on the grill. I guess Jan thought paella for dinner would be good also. I started looking for recipes for paella on the grill. There were many to choose from. Often they had very exotic ingredients. I like to cook with things I can find at the Publix down the street. Or at least at one grocery store. But preferably my Publix because I know where most things are there. 
So this is the recipe that I started with from Chowhound. It is a good place to start. Not to complicated and most of the ingredients I could find at Publix. I even created a paella shopping list for that store. I am trying different rices because this Publix does not carry the kind in the recipe.
The pan above is my third time making paella on the grill. This one I liked the best so far. The rice I used worked fine. I have been trying different tomatoes also.  The first time I made it I used vine ripe tomatoes and ran them through a food processor grater. That reduced them to a pulp. You got the tomato taste but could not see any tomatoes. The next time I used crushed canned tomatoes. Trying to make less prep work. This was ok but the paella slightly burned. I think there were two reasons. First the fire may have been too hot and second I I think a little sugar was added to the canned tomatoes.
This last time I used plum tomatoes that I had my Sous Chef Tom dice and smash with a potato smasher. I like the way this turned out the best. The smashing released enough juice that it could coat the rice but left enough small pieces of tomato that you could see the red in the rice. Also there was not so much tomato that it hid the yellow of the saffron in the rice. I like my food to also have some color. The next batch I make I'm going to focus on the heat of the grill and achieving a crispy crust.