GrowNYC is the non-profit that makes the Greenmarkets happen, and they recently changed its name to that from CENYC, the acronym for Council for the Environment of New York City. And when not cooking, entertaining or putting up foods for the winter, she is advocating for and visiting regional farms as the farm inspector at GrowNYC. (Beans are a traditional addition often forgotten today, from the dish’s peasant roots.) June is actually a very talented cook of all kinds of food, not just paella. Good ingredients are key: June sagely froze peas from this spring to sprinkle on at the end, while her lima beans were just in-season and fresh. The detailed procedure she provides in it was eye-opening to me in many ways, and I can’t wait to give it a try. Since then, I can’t get paella off the brain, so I had to bug June for her tips and pry her tried-and-true recipe (below!). I stood before the barbecue, transfixed, and watched the mussels and clams slowly open in the pan and continue to gape wide, as if they were all preparing to sing the Hallelujah chorus. My cocktail, served up by a guest/friend behind a makeshift bar, must have gone straight to my sun-weary head. On top of another grill, there were sliced zucchini just going down, the smell of blackened shisito peppers was in the air, and trays full of grilled sausages, browned chicken, rabbit meat and beans flocking the station all told me that June had been laboring over open fire for some time now. The wide, cast-iron pan was placed on top of a blazing hibachi grill on a small space of concrete. June was just adding the shellfish to a paella pan, plunking clams and mussels hinge side down into the rice. I’d been to her paella party at about this time of year last summer, and so I knew what kind of yumminess to expect from this event. I was at a backyard party in Brooklyn a few weeks ago hosted by my friend June.
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