Soul of Spanish cooking

VALENCIA, SPAIN — This Mediterranean city is home of the 2007 America’s Cup competition, but after the yachts and crowds return home, it still will be the home of paella, the soul of Spanish cooking.

Paella takes rice to new heights. It’s not about such garnishes as chicken, rabbit, seafood, meats or vegetables. It’s the rice, and Valencia, well, it’s also the home of Spanish rice production.

“Paella transforms rice… into a brilliantly complex and exceedingly baroque creation,” Penelope Casas writes in one of her cookbooks, “Paella! Spectacular Rice Dishes From Spain” (Henry Holt & Co.).

She has no patience with the incorrectly prepared paella that is common outside Spain. “Paella is not steamed rice, cooked in a covered pan, but generally a ‘dry’ rice that cooks uncovered in a wide, flat paella pan. It is not bright orange (that comes from artificial coloring), and it is not a precooked pot of Uncle Ben’s rice” with meats or other garnishes placed on top. “Garnishes, in fact, are totally secondary to paella and among their least important features,” she says.

Washington’s Jose Andres, a son of Spain and master of cuisines from the eastern Mediterranean to Mexico, predicts that “paella and other rice dishes of Spain will become the next big food trend that will stay in the United States.”

Mr. Andres serves paella in his Jaleo restaurants in the Washington area, and he also schedules annual paella festivals for which chefs travel from Spain to show their expertise at the three Jaleos.

In his book “Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America” (Clarkson Potter), Mr. Andres writes in the introduction to his recipe for chicken-and-mushroom paella:

“I can remember as a child listening to the older generation talking about the days when chicken was served on special occasions in the little towns across Spain. People had few chickens and little grain to feed them … . This [recipe] is an homage to those days when chickens were something special and the dishes that featured them were the centerpiece of a feast.”

Mr. Andres is from the Asturias region on Spain’s northern coast on the Atlantic Ocean, but he knows his rice and paella. He uses a sofrito — basically a thick sauce of olive oil, tomatoes, onion and a half clove of garlic — to add to his chicken-and-mushroom paella before the rice is cooked.

Although paella has become the national dish and also is trans-Spanish, it is believed to have originated in the Valencia area, east of Madrid on the Mediterranean coast, the city that won the bid to host the 2007 America’s Cup races offshore. The challenger to the defending champion, Switzerland’s Alinghi, is to be determined between Italy’s Luna Rosa and Emirates Team New Zealand in a series of races beginning Friday.

Ask the Valencians about a true paella alla Valenciana, and they will agree that seafood and meats are not combined. During several visits to Valencia, where I enjoyed paellas in many restaurants, I have never seen one that mixed meat and seafood on menu or table.

Paellas also can be vegetarian. Whatever the garnish, the rice should be dry, quite different from Italy’s creamy risotto, which is stirred continuously and never sees a crust. Some paella fans like to be served the rice from the edge and bottom of the pan because of its hard crust.

As paella is all about rice, there is one type that is preferred: the short-grained variety produced in the vast rice fields south of Valencia between the Mediterranean and the mountains. The favorite is the bomba variety, which cracks around the middle like an accordion instead of from top to bottom. Mr. Andres says that Calasparra rice from Spain or arborio from Italy may be used instead — but in Valencia, bomba is the rice of choice for paella.

Besides bomba, there are two other rices that can be certified and marketed as “arroz de Valencia” as a designation of origin under the rules of a regulatory council: senia and bahia, which are both medium-grain. These are Valencia’s big three, preferred over the world’s more than 5,000 other rices.

The Valencian rices — about one-third of the Spanish crop — are produced in the flat fields of the Albufera, a freshwater lake in a national park of the same name. The Albufera is a haven for migratory birds as well as a recreational area for the city and surrounding municipalities.

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