Rice and paella

Spaniards can happily talk for hours about food. One never-ending topic of conversation is the “best” way to make almost any traditional dish, from fabada to cocido. This piece is about paella, or maybe rice.

For a few years, I have made a rice dish at home that I describe as paella to Maggie. I would never make the mistake of describing it as paella to any Spanish person. I would always describe it as rice with things. That’s because I added things that are “not allowed” – like pepper and onions – and I use pre-prepared caldo, a ready-made broth, to cook it in. However wrong my version was it was a quick and easy meal for me to cook that we both liked. The principal taste came from the broth prepared by a company called Fallera, who ruined the whole thing by discontinuing the broth. Since then, I have tried several other ready-prepared broths and I’ve liked none of them. Next, I worked my way through a couple of varieties of packets of powdered flavourings that can be added to the water as the rice cooks. The most commonly available packet flavouring is called Carmencita which is produced by a firm from the nearby town of Novelda. I don’t like Carmencita and I didn’t like the other flavourings I tried. So, I set out on a round of supermarkets, grocers and butchers looking for different brands of seasoning or any overlooked broths. In most shops, I was able to have a look at what they had, and skip out if they had nothing new to offer. But in one of the butchers the assistant engaged me in conversation. I explained that I was looking for something to add flavour to the water I was cooking my rice in. The woman recommended Carmencita and, when  I said I didn’t care for it, disdain flashed across her face. “It’s what we all use,” she said. My foreigner status was underlined.

Alright, I thought. If I can’t do it the easy way, let’s do it properly. If I can’t make my own bastardised version, how should I really cook an authentic Paella Valenciana? I should stress here that there are all sorts of rice dishes which are perfectly acceptable to even the most picky of Spaniards. That’s why most Spaniards order most rice dishes as exactly that – as arroz, not as paella. Pinoso, for instance, is very proud of the quality of the rice with snails and rabbit that are produced in some of its restaurants. So, as long as you don’t bump into a purist and try to pass it off as Paella Valenciana, you can put exactly what you want in your rice, and some varieties, like arroz a banda, arroz negro, arroz con costra, arroz al horno, arroz del senyoret, arroz de bogavante, arroz de coliflor y bacalao, are all, more or less, standardised. Other regions also produce traditional rice dishes like caldero in Cartagena or arroz meloso in Albacete, of which they are equally proud. But Paella Valenciana is different. This is the one that’s a paella, not a rice.

So, paella has been around since the fifteenth century. The general consensus is that it has its origins in the area around Albufera, the big lake just to the south of Valencia city, where it was a peasant dish made from ingredients readily to hand. It wasn’t until 2011, though, that the Agriculture Ministry of the Valencian Community designed a set of standards to help maintain the authenticity of this product so identified with the region. They set up a D.O., denominación de origen, a sort of quality mark recognised on many Spanish foodstuffs and dishes. The D.O. said that a real paella could only contain these ingredients: rice, chicken, rabbit, bajoqueta or ferradura (types of beans), garrofó (another sort of bean), olive oil, water, saffron, tomato, and salt. Apparently, this was backed up – well, with a couple of provisos – by some research in 266 towns in Valencia when over 400 cooks over the age of 50 were  interviewed. The slight discordance was because a lot of these cooks also included sweet paprika, rosemary and, when in season, artichokes in their recipes, but they were, even then, minor ingredients in comparison to the ten essentials. What was equally revealing was what they never put into a paella. The no-nos are seafood, fish, peas, chorizo and broth.

Bear in mind that all of this is about Paella Valenciana. There are, as I said, lots of other accepted variations and anyone cooking rice at home or using their granny's recipe may well add things that "shouldn't" be there. 

And, finally, here are  some of the list of tips/comments from one of the chef presenters of MasteChef Spain. 

Valencian paella is not cooked with broth, but with water.
The ideal rice for Valencian paella is short-grain, preferably bomba.
The layer of rice should be very thin; that’s why a big, wide pan is used in the first place.
Every good paella should have a bit of socarrat in the pan. Socarrat is dried out, nearly burned, rice that sticks to the bottom of the pan.
The very best paellas are cooked over fires fuelled by wood.
And the reason it’s called paella is that it’s cooked in a pan called a paella. The cook is called a paellera.

Where it's practical the paella is not plated but is eaten directly from the paella pan which is placed in the centre of the table. This is definitely one of the more "flexible" suggestions/commands.

So, first, catch your rabbit.