Rice and seafood

Clicking castanets, bulls, frilly frocks - the clichés associated with Spain. Most seem to be linked to the region in the South of Spain called Andalucia but one of the things typically Spanish, paella, is associated with this area and more particularly with the area around Valencia.

Paella is a rice dish. There are tens if not hundreds of varieties from the chickpea and sausage ones baked in the oven to the rabbit and snail one we eat around here. However, the variety that both Vesta and I think of as being most usual has yellow rice, seafood and maybe some chicken along with a few bits of veg to add colour - the paella mixta.

On Sunday as we left Valencia we stopped off at the Albufera, a big wetland area. The water is used to flood paddy fields to grow short grained rice. Just across the way is the Mediterranean teeming with life.

Ah, ah - rice and seafood and veg all in the same place.