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 he 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 flavor. 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 both visually appealing as well as tastes amazing without the need to drown the paella in pre-cooked toppings that will only dilute the flavor,” he says.

West Orange County needed an authentic paella option, Puerto said. When he moved to Winter Garden three years ago, he sampled many different kinds of paella, and although he respects the people who tried to make his home country’s dish, it just didn’t taste authentic.

“I was seeing paella with cilantro, lobster; it was cooked together with no sense,” he said. “I wanted to bring a piece of my country here and do it properly.”

FAMILY AFFAIR

Puerto started cooking with his father and grandmother when he was about 10 years old, starting with various soups.

His father, an upholsterer, also was an amateur chef and did all the cooking for his family. His grandmother cooked for a wealthy Spanish family for about 20 years.

Before coming to the U.S., Puerto earned a bachelor’s degree in management and business administration, which was beneficial when he decided to start his business.

“I wanted to create an experience, a link between people who are going to eat the paella and they are watching me mix the different ingredients,” Puerto said. “You can make that bond in someone’s home. They see how the tradition of paella, how I do it, and people love it.”

SO BEAUTIFUL

Paellita Bueni offers two paella options: A version with chicken or shrimp and a vegetable dish. The version with meat includes onion, green and red peppers, scratch tomatoes, green beans, and peas. In the vegetarian option, the green beans are substituted with zucchini.

His cooking dish is enormous — big enough to cook for 12 people or 40.

After cutting up all the ingredients, Puerto starts with onion, garlic and green pepper; he adds the peas and green beans next, followed by the tomatoes, and then the Spanish paprika, the rice and broth.

“After that I need to cook for 15 minutes, exactly 15 minutes,” he said. “The first five minutes (are) with a very strong fire, and the next nine minutes (are over) medium fire, and the last minute is strong fire. I try to create socarrat rice, crispy rice. That’s very important because people want it to be crisp.

“The problem with the rice is it’s tricky,” Puerto said. “If you cook too much, it’s soggy. If you cook too little, it’s too hard. Something comes naturally to me how to do it. You have to have a sixth sense to know exactly how (to cook) the rice. It’s all intuition to know exactly how to cook.

How do you know how much broth to put in the paella? I know it has to be double the broth than the rice.”

Puerto buys a bomba rice from Spain because it absorbs the broth really well. He said it’s impossible to cook paella with Indian rice because it doesn’t take the broth properly.

Customers also can order a Spanish charcuterie board with foods such as Manchego cheese, chorizo and Spanish salami, as well as flan.

To add to the atmosphere, Puerto has a partnership with a local Flemenco guitar player, and together the two can create an inviting atmosphere with food and music.

“You arrive to a party, and I’m there cooking paella and there’s someone playing Flamenco music, and it’s so nice,” he said. “People who went to Spain say this is so beautiful.”