Ms. Diaz was my high school Spanish teacher. Fact is, her name isn’t even Ms. Diaz, but I can’t remember her name now after all these years. So, for the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to refer to her as Ms. Diaz. I hated Ms. Diaz, she wasn’t a very popular teacher. She was tough on us, a no nonsense type of teacher. Normally, a tough teacher wouldn’t be an issue for me since I was always a good student. But, this was Spanish, boy did I suck at Spanish. And most Spanish teachers are easy on us, they understand that some people just don’t have the talent for a new language at that age and as long as you try, you’ll get by just fine. But, not Ms. Diaz, she had expectations, in retrospect, she was a great teacher.
The year was 1995, you know how I remember that? Because OJ’s verdict was announced during Ms. Diaz’s class and one of the more popular black kid at school ran through the hallway screaming not guilty. But I digress.
So why is Ms. Diaz a bitch? I have no idea but that’s what I wrote on my desk one day before leaving class. I don’t remember why I did it but I did. And being the diligent teacher that she is Ms. Diaz checked the students’ desks every day. The next day I was asked to go up to the front of the class to write the letter “B” for her. I knew what she was checking for so I purposely wrote it differently. Lucky I got away with it but I feel deep down inside she suspected it was me rather than kids from other periods. But since I’ve always been a good student, I was never punished for vandalizing the desk with her name.
Ms. Diaz was a different kind of Spanish teacher. She didn’t go about teaching Spanish with the typical laissez-faire style that most Spanish teachers I’ve experienced growing up. She demanded proper grammar and teachings within the curriculum, even from the Puerto Rican students. You see, most Spanish teachers typically let the Puerto Rican students get away with not following the curriculum and getting by through their natural advantage. But not Ms. Diaz, she demanded the students to follow the curriculum and answer the questions in proper sharing grammar that was taught in the textbooks. She treated everyone equally. Besides the language, Ms. Diaz also cared about the Spanish culture. She wasn’t a Mexican or Puerto Rican teacher teaching Spanish, she was a bona fide “Spanish” teacher.
A few days before Christmas, Ms. Diaz, wanting to inject some culture in us, took us out to experience real Spanish cuisine. She told us the restaurant does in her opinion the best Paella in all of Queens and Long Island. With 20 dollars from my parents, I went to the restaurant not knowing what to expect. Growing up Asian in the 90s in Queens, this is what we all ate on a regular basis during the high school years – School lunch, deli sandwiches, pizza, McDonald’s, and Chinese takeout food. None of my friends knew what paella was, mind you this was before the internet was commonly accessible, we couldn’t just look it up on our phone, back in those days, if we wanted to learn something, we had to go to the library and look it up on microfilm.
As soon as I walked through the door, I knew I’d like the food. I can see on the faces of most of my classmates that the smell of the fish and seafood permeating throughout the restaurant was making them uncomfortable, but not me, for a kid from Taiwan, the smell was very welcoming. The shrimp, the clams, the squid, the rice, all very common ingredients in my family’s cooking at home. It was so good that I finished it in no time. It was the best Paella I’ve ever had and it was a perfect dish.
After that field trip in ’95, I never went back to that restaurant again. In fact I don’t remember having paella again until I moved back to Taiwan. I don’t know why, it just ended up that way, life got in the way. That and the fact I moved to the city after HS and got into the typical NYU student diet - pizza, Chinese take-out, grilled cheese sandwiches from Weinstein and 3rd North student cafeteria, gyros from the Greek food stand, and instant ramen at end of the month because you ran out of money. After college, I moved back to Taipei and it was after a few years in Taipei that I had paella again. Tapas was becoming popular in Taiwan and Spanish cuisine was popping up everywhere, I saw paella on the menu and couldn’t resist. It was good, but it just wasn’t perfect like the first one I had in high school. I became obsessed in recreating the taste I had from ’95, spending countless hours researching recipes, watching youtube videos, talking to chefs, experimenting with different ingredients, and in the process making my friends sick of eating my paella. I even made my good friend Michael Ou, the awesome chef at Hanabi in Taipei, please go visit if you have a chance, make it for me and my friends. His version was super good, but it still tasted very different from the version I had in High School.
Looking back, that paella dish was perfect, and there are many other “perfect” dishes I’ve had so far in life. The saffron chestnut bak choy at Da Dong in Beijing comes to mind, so is the first time I had xiaolong bao at Din Tai Fung in Taipei, the bowl of laksa at the Singapore Changi Airport T3 terminal (it’s shameful, I’ve been to Singapore probably 10 times now, and I’ve never had laksa except at the airport, I deserve to be shot for that), and white pepper crabs at No Signboard in Geylang in Singapore. These are the “Perfect” dishes that I can seriously eat every day or as much as possible if I get the chance. And I actually did that with Din Tai Fung when I lived in Beijing. Beijing was a tough town food wise, everything was far and not a lot of options where I lived, except for a Din Tai Fung. We went there all the time – tough day at work, treat yourself with some Din Tai Fung, weekend brunch? Din Tai Fung, friends in town, Din Tai Fung. The excitement I used to have going to Din Tai Fung is no longer there anymore. I over did it.
That’s our human condition – you always want something you don’t have, and when you have too much of a good thing, you start to take it for granted. You see this in other aspects of life, you always feel that other job out there is better than what you have even though your current job is probably much better. I’ve made that mistake before, I see a lot of younger people making that mistake now. But, in order to learn and grow, you need make that mistake yourself. If you don't do try then you wouldn’t know. Only by making that mistake then you’ll realized what you missed.
This made me more appreciative of the moment. I no longer chase other things and just focus on what’s in front of me. I’m still working on moderation, that’s something I don’t know how to control yet. I see older people have better control on moderation so hopefully as I grow older I can learn this skill as well.
So, thank you Ms. Diaz, may be you were mean when I was younger. Sorry to have called you a bitch but your lesson has been invaluable. This paella's for you!
This version is the closest I've made to the original version I've had
I used shrimp shells and lobser shells to make this stock, this was a really expensive stock but totally worth it