Paella
Adapted from The Cooking of Spain and Portugal by Peter S. Feibleman (Time Life Education,1969).
In Spain, paella is often made outdoors in large paella pans over wood fires. Ingredients are prepar...
cooking over fire
Stoking the Coals with Olga Bravo and Becky Wagner to Make Authentic Paella
A New Tradition is Created with a Favored Family Recipe and the Gift of a Special Pan
Even before entering the backyard, I can smell the woodsmoke drifting through the trees, rekindling memories of cookouts and bonfires. Thanks to a serendipitous introduction by my good friend Gail Solomon, I am visiting the home of Olga Bravo and Becky Wagner to dine on Olga’s famous paella.
Surrounded by woods above the Wood River in southern Rhode Island, their land includes a cozy three-room house, a newly constructed barn (which also serves as their dining room) and several small outbuildings, which they are slowly fixing up to use as art studios and living spaces. It also happens to be a perfect setting for outdoor cooking.
Paella Prep
While Becky feeds the fire over which dinner will be prepared, Olga brings out a huge antique cast-iron paella pan, and explains its provenance. But for the 18-inch paella pan (with 3-foot handle), which was a gift from her late brother, and a Time-Life cookbook from the mid-’60s, which she inherited from her mother, Olga would have made paella as her mother did: on the stovetop.
The cookbook, Olga says, “turned my mother from a lousy cook into a decent one.” Although Olga’s family left Spain for Puerto Rico, then to New York and eventually Rhode Island, Olga had never prepared paella on an outdoor fire, as is the traditional Spanish method, until the oversized pan came into her life.
While Olga ferries bowls—each piled high with a different ingredient—from the kitchen to a prep table near the wood fire, Becky pours a slick of oil into the pan, now set over hot coals atop a grill rack. The couple deliberate before deciding that, yes, the oil is hot enough to begin the cooking. The tip is to wait for the oil to shimmer, then drop in a few grains of rice to see if they sizzle.
After the sofrito (peppers, onions, garlic and tomato), saffron and basmati rice are added to the pan and stirred several times to toast up the rice, Becky counts out for Olga how many cups of water to add to the pan. A quick stir of the rice/water mixture and then everything else is added: seasoned and browned chicken thighs, lobster claws and tails, shrimp, littlenecks, mussels, chorizo and, finally, peas.
While the paella cooks quickly—”18 minutes on the fire, start to finish”—Olga says that she generally needs two hours to prep all the ingredients.
“Paella is a bit time-consuming but not difficult to prepare, and it’s a great way to use Rhode Island’s wonderful seafood,” says Olga. Live lobsters and littlenecks from Rhode Island waters, plus shrimp and mussels are procured from Ocean Catch Seafood in Wakefield, where the two often shop for locally landed fish and shellfish.
“The recipe I use doesn’t call for squid, but you can add squid or more lobster and so forth,” says Olga.
Beyond Baking
As Olga tends to the paella, Becky shows me around the “the fixer-upper cabin” property, which they found a perfectly quiet and secluded respite during the pandemic. Although Becky and Olga are, perhaps, best known for the iconic and beloved bakery/café Olga’s Cup and Saucer—located first in Little Compton, later in Providence’s Jewelry District and closed in 2019—their talents aren’t confined to cuisine.
In one of the two small art studios, some of Olga’s sketches drawn for her children’s cookbook are on display. In the ‘90s, a publishing executive from Henry Holt & Company was so entranced by Olga’s Cup and Saucer in Little Compton that he asked Olga to write a children’s cookbook. She agreed—on the condition that she would illustrate it. She, like Becky, has an MFA from art school. The charming confection, Olga’s Cup and Saucer: A Picture Book With Recipes, was published in 1995.
Becky taught herself metalworking and made, among many other objects, the cooling racks and creative tiered display racks for all the breads at the former café. Yet, in the other studio Becky shows me an impressive-looking industrial sewing machine, a birthday gift from Olga. When Aquidneck Island banned plastic shopping bags, Becky taught herself to sew and made bags from burlap sacks and other recycled materials, including grain bags. Branded under the couple’s newest venture, TheGoldenTrout.com, they sell these items at the Aquidneck Growers Market, where they used to sell bread and pastry.
No longer a bakery owner, Olga is now an assistant professor at Johnson & Wales University, where she teaches artisan bread and viennoiserie four days a week. “It’s a lot of physical work, but I love it,” says Olga. “Every time I do a demo, the students applaud; it’s so sweet.”
A Marvelous Meal
We circle back to the wood fire, where time and alchemy have done their thing and mouthwatering aromas are escaping from underneath the cover of foil. It’s time to take the paella off the fire. Given the pan’s massive size filled with the weight of multiple ingredients, Becky quips that they need a “strong, manly man” to carry it from the fire. Once transported to the barn, the paella is served with Becky’s beautifully made, decorative, yet fully functional long-handled metal spoons that are precisely proportioned to the paella pan.
Calling this paella “better than what she had eaten growing up,” Olga explains that their friends really look forward to it. “We make it for special occasions—someone’s retirement or special visitors—but it’s actually a simple dinner to make,” adds Becky, “except for carrying the pan.”
The paella is sumptuous and a complete meal unto itself with widely varied, yet undeniably cohesive ingredients from land and sea, made lightly spicy from the chorizo, golden from the saffron and scented with woodsmoke from the fire. The pan is so well-seasoned that the rice gets deliciously caramelized and crispy on the bottom—the ultimate test for successful paella—called the socarrat.
Given the couple’s respective culinary chops, I expected Olga’s paella and Becky’s addictive guacamole (with the perfect ratio of salt, cilantro and lime to avocado!) to be fabulous—and trust me, they were. But, I had not anticipated how delightful it would be to dine and dish with Becky, Olga and four of their friends, former and current hardworking culinary pros.
As our plates emptied of dessert crumbs—Olga’s flaky and lightly sweet tarte tatin—and our stomachs rumbled with pleasure, we exchanged tales of our respective restaurant work experiences. As others continued chatting, I collected my belongings, including a colorful clutch I purchased from Becky and a “to-go” container of paella, and bade everyone farewell. On my drive home, I vowed: Even if I don’t make paella outdoors, I can definitely include more fun on the menu.
For Olga’s recipe for wood-fired paella, see below. And note: If you’re searching for a similar oversized pan, Olga and Becky have spotted newer versions at UreOutfitters.com in Hope Valley.
Photo 1: The paella is served with the long-handled metal spoons Becky made to fit proportionally to the oversized pan.
Photo 2: Prepping the ingredients takes longer than the cooking but overall, paella is not that difficult to make.
Photo 3: Becky Wagner (left) and Olga Bravo in step two: Olga adds rice which Becky then stirs to coat with the oil and sofrito before water is added.
Photo 4: Seafood, mostly from local waters, is layered in before the paella gets covered with foil to cook.
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