Back in the 90s I really had a thing for Posh Spice. I cost my mother a fortune in saffron.
golf clap
Yeah, I always buy a shit ton of cheap saffron when I go to Spain. Way more than I use.
I still have bags of paprika I bought on my last trip to Hungary, and that was six years ago.
I’m guessing that by “the quintessential paella” you mean one of the recipes which include shellfish, but despite what some idjits insist on, there’s a ton of different recipes (including, yes, several with chorizo). You have your seafood paellas, and your inland paellas, and your fish (no shellfish) paellas, and your sea-and-mountain paellas… Paellas are part of a whole macro-family of Spanish dishes consisting basically of “one base (may be a carb, may be a bean, may even be fancy and be both) plus whatever is in the pantry”.
And you have fideuà (fee-DEHWAH). Take any paella recipe, use thick short noodles instead of rice. Legend has it the recipe was born when the cook in a Valencia fishing boat realized he’d run out of rice. Fish he had plenty, saffron he had, noodles (fideos) he had…
Around 1983 I was in an Indian store in Arlington, VA and for some strange reason they had a sale on saffron - something like $20 for an ounce. An ounce of saffron is a HUGE quantity.
So, I bought it and kept in in my freezer, using tiny quantities here and there. That saffron traveled with me to Micronesia, back to the US, to Indonesia, to Mozambique, back to Indonesia, to Egypt, and back to Indonesia, always kept tightly sealed and in the freezer when it wasn’t being shipped. I would sniff it before I used it to be sure it was still okay, and it always passed.
Finally, after about 25 years, I said, “this is ridiculous! I gotta replace this” even though there was still close to 1/4 ounce left. So I bought some new saffron from Penzey’s.
Comparing the new batch to my extremely old saffron, I could easily tell the difference - the new stuff smelled stronger and had more nuanced notes. But the old stuff wasn’t bad at all. I threw it out anyway; it’s embarrassing to admit you’re using spices over 2 decades old.
Anyway, saffron definitely doesn’t go bad if you seal it well and store it in the freezer.
I remember on chopped someone dumped a bunch of saffron on the dish he was cooking and the judges crapped bricks and had kittens, luckily it helped the dish but one of the judges asked: " did you know you just used about 400 bucks worth of saffron?"
the guy cooking said "oh is that what that was? I’ve never seen it in person before …I thought it would just look cool on the dish " the judges about died all over again … the look on ted Allens face …