Chef concocts perfect recipe for new business venture
Chef Elias Herruzo Puerto knows his way around the kitchen, as he spent his entire life watching his father and paternal grandmother cook many Spanish dishes in his hometown of Madrid. As an adult, he enjoys replicating many of those dishes in the United States — and is intent on introducing Americans to the proper way to make paella.
Puerto recently started Paellita Bueni, a catering business in which she cooks paella on location so customers can experience fresh the authentic Spanish dish. He said people tend to drown out the flavors of real paella by adding too many fancy ingredients.
As he states on his website, his work and philosophy is this: “I believe that we eat not only with our stomachs but with our eyes as well. However, there’s a fine line between making a paella visually stimulating while also making sure it doesn’t take away from the flavour. With traditional paellas from Spain, less is always more. My No. 1 focus is to always make sure the paella is explosive with flavor, and to do this we cannot put all kinds of decorative items over it.
“The ingredients themselves lend to a beautiful color combination that is