A Spanish Gem

Rice is one of those products that can be found in nearly every house and every restaurant worldwide. This simple and cheap product, extremely ingrained in the roots of nearly every cuisine worldwide, offers infinite gastronomical possibilities. In Spain, given the traditional and lower-class cuisine’s great influence on the nation’s gastronomy, rice is an extremely used product. It’s even the protagonist of what is perhaps Spain’s most globally-afamed dish: Paella. Either way, generation after generation in Spain, people have found a way to maximize the potential of this grain product to accomplish wonderful yet simplistic dishes.

Talking about rice-based dishes without mentioning what Paella is and means to us Spaniards would be a pretty offensive neglection to any of my compatriots. However, I’m not just going to focus on this famous Spanish dish, rather also emphasize the fact there are many seafood rice-based dishes, which can be considered variations of Paella, that are equally as good and as important. There are very few things that beat a GOOD Paella (Yes, it’s extremely hard to find good Paellas, especially if you’re a tourist, so it’s important that you’re able to find a restaurant where locals go) in front of the sea on a sunny Summer day. If you ever find yourself visiting Spain in the Summertime, walking through a coastal town or city, you’ll get tired of seeing Paellas on every table, especially in the regions of Valencia and Catalonia, where the roots of this dish are found. In Spain, these kinds of meals are almost like a cultural tradition. Eating Paella with the WHOLE family (it has to be the whole family in Spain) has become a fundamental part of our lives during the estival season. However, I personally have to admit I’ve slightly lost interest in this dish, and it primarily has to do with how increasingly mistreated it has been over the years. As tourism has increased, the quality of Paella has dramatically plummeted, thereby I wanted to publish this post to detail what constitutes the best version of this afamed Spanish dish.

Whenever I think of Paella the first thing that comes to mind is the sea. However, this is a faulty perception the vast majority of people have. Some of the greatest Paellas I’ve ever had have been obviously seafood ones, but also meat Paellas with mushrooms and sausage, for instance. Or with both seafood and meat, a really typical Catalan version of dishes called mar i montanya which literally means sea and mountain. A nice example of this could be the Paella with Palamós shrimp and Boletus Edulis (a really prestigious mushroom) from a restaurant in Girona. The only certainty with Paellas is that, regardless of what the chef decides to put on it, it has to be fresh and of the highest quality to get the best taste of this great Spanish dish. Even the rice! It has to be good rice, which is sometimes hard to find, and, above all, well cooked. The rice in the Paella should be slightly hard and not clustered together, rather kind of loose. And although all of these things are fundamental aspects of a good Paella, the secret to this dish, what will turn it from good to excellent, is the sofrito as it’s known in Spain, which is basically the sauteed vegetables that constitute the “base” of the dish. Letting the onions, the peppers, the tomato, and the garlic sizzle on a thin layer of quality olive oil may seem a basic step in the preparation process, yet it’s the most important and the one people focus less on. In the basics there’s excellence and without an excellent sofrito, you’ll never have an excellent Paella. In part, this is why smaller local restaurants are the ones you should look for, as they know and appreciate the traditional roots of such an emblematic dish in Spain like Paella is.