Spanish paella: from humble peasant meal to rice dish famous around the world, and loved by Asians
Spanish paella, nowadays usually an aromatic combination of mussels, prawns, clams, squid, vegetables and chicken with saffron rice, cooked in a large pan, is a dish popular dish around the world, but finding an example of the original recipe isn’t so easy.
It’s probably not “the real thing” unless the recipe comes from a specific region of Spain, and if it includes seafood – as most popular paellas do – it’s definitely just another variant.
The birthplace of paella is the autonomous Valencian Community in the east of Spain, where the dish is made with rice, meat and vegetables. For generations, locals have enjoyed the dish’s ancestor, arroz à la Valenciana – rice cooked the Valencian way.
The agricultural origin of paella’s staple ingredient, rice, gives the dish an exotic Asian soul. However, the grain was introduced to Spain in the 8th century by Moorish invaders from northern Africa. The Moors first began cultivating rice in Spain in the Albufera wetlands, to the south of the city of Valencia.
“Paella originated in the 19th century, although there are earlier versions of arroz à la Valenciana and arroz à la Morisca [rice cooked the Moorish way] that can be found in cookbooks dating back to the 16th century,” says Maria Paz Moreno, professor of Spanish language and culture at the University of Cincinnati in the US, and the author of many cookbooks featuring Spain’s gastronomic traditions.
Rice became a widespread crop in Spain in the 18th century, when increasingly sophisticated cultivation and irrigation techniques allowed farmers to both drain the marshlands distant from urban areas and prevent malaria outbreaks in the flooded fields required to grow the crop, Moreno says; the then new drug quinine could be used to treat malaria.
A paella culture flourished in the Valencia region because it is an ideal place to grow rice thanks to its specific humidity, weather and fertile soil. Popular indigenous rice varieties such as bomba, senia and bahia are characterised by their low starch release and the capacity to absorb the flavours of the ingredients with which they are cooked, making them ideal for paella. Today, the best rice grown in Spain is cultivated in Valencia’s Albufera national park, which consists of a lagoon surrounded by old farms called barracas.
Juan Valero Munoz’s family has been growing rice since the late 1800s on the 250-hectare Tartana plantation in Albufera. In the old days, paella was a communal, humble peasant dish, the product of a joint effort by local communities that originally included fish.
“Rice field workers, hunters and fishermen were poor people who came together, and each one brought one thing: chicken, duck, eels, green beans, white beans, lard, rice, salt,” says Munoz. “Each used to cultivate and produce one different ingredient at home.”
Arroz à la Valencia is cooked in a regular pan, while the one used for paella is much larger, flat and round. The name paella possibly comes from the Latin patella, meaning “pan”, but another more romantic legend has it that the word is short for por ella, “for her” – a dish supposedly made by husbands on Sundays to honour the hard work done at home by their wives.
Paella was originally cooked on an open fire and eaten directly from the pan by field workers. It was made simply with rice, saffron, and the seasonal vegetables and meat available. Over time, it has evolved from a simple daily dish into a festive one enjoyed on weekends and holidays.
“In many rural mountain areas it is still typical to cook it with rabbit and snails, while on the coast it is cooked with seafood, fish broth instead of meat broth, and even squid ink,” says Moreno. “There are many versions of paella, but what is traditional is that it is considered a festive dish to be shared with family and friends, and thus it is typically cooked on Sundays as a special meal that requires a bit of preparation and which is often enjoyed outdoors.”
Even though it is still considered a communal dish, paella is no longer eaten directly from the same huge pan, but served individually onto each diner’s plate.
Diehard culinary traditionalists in Valencia are proud of their “first” paella recipe and spell it with a capital P. Even though different variants and styles have taken hold, locals are serious about their traditional Paella Valenciana.
Only certain ingredients are acceptable, says chef Nacho Romero from Kaymus restaurant in Valencia. Chicken, rabbit, snails, ferraura or roget (a local variety of green flat beans), tavella and garrofon (local varieties of beans without the pod), tomato, extra virgin olive oil, saffron and rice, and seasonal artichokes.
“Locals get upset when they see other ingredients in a so-called Paella Valenciana,” says Romero. “It would be the same as for a Neapolitan to call a pizza with chorizo and pineapple pizza Margherita. Valencians do not like it when too many ingredients are mixed; that’s not the true paella because it goes against the idea of the humble dish created by poor families working in the countryside, who could not, of course, afford expensive seafood such as lobster.”
Purists who wrinkle their noses at the thought of mixing meat with seafood in a rice dish feel globalisation and tourism have tainted the soul of their original speciality, even if it is one of the most replicated across the world and most googled online.
To raise awareness of the traditional dish, three years ago the city’s tourism promotion agency Visit Valencia launched World Paella Day, which is celebrated on September 20. New cooking schools in Valencia offer paella masterclasses to locals and visitors, while so-called paella ambassadors tour the world.
Javier Vicente Rejas, chef at Singapore’s FOC Spanish restaurant and a Valencia native, co-founded the London Paella School and plans to open a Singapore branch soon. Different varieties of paella are served at FOC, including less traditional dishes, with squid ink, prawns and squid, lobster, pork and mushrooms, and a vegetarian version.
Rejas says Asians have a love affair with paella, and it’s not just because rice is the main ingredient. The global popularity of the dish entices those who are eager to taste and learn to prepare it, and they are often amazed by the experience.
“When Chinese people come to Valencia, what they expect from a typical Valencian paella is a seafood paella, in fact, the translation of paella in Chinese is ‘rice with seafood’,” says Miguel Angel Perez, brand and markets manager for Visit Valencia, who has promoted paella in many Asian countries.
“They get really surprised when no shrimps or mussels are found,” he says. “But 200 years ago people did not have refrigerators, so seafood wasn’t really eaten. Locals would mainly have chicken, rabbit and vegetables … Ducks, which are also loved in Chinese cuisine, were and still are added to paella, as there are many ducks at Albufera lake.”
In the last 50 years, global mass tourism and culinary evolution have led to many different paella recipes, says Perez, and seafood is one of the most popular variations, even more desired than traditional Valencian paella.
Other varieties of the dish include arros negre (black rice made with squid ink), arros del senyoret (so-called gentleman’s rice with peeled and prepared seafood) and dishes made with cuttlefish, artichokes, green garlic, lobster, and striped and king prawns.
Paella-style dishes can be found across Europe because the Moors cultivated rice along the Mediterranean shores, making it a core binding element in the local food culture.
Portugal has almost exactly the same Spanish recipe, originally known as rice in the fashion of Valencia and today simply called seafood rice. Italy has risotto alla pescatora, rice cooked the fisherman’s way with seafood, and the yellow risotto alla Milanese with saffron and bone marrow.
