When paella is not a paella

FOR everything under the sun there is an influencer, and that includes paella.

Paella is accepted as Spain’s national dish and is probably obtainable throughout the world under this name, but Alicante influencer Elena Vidal has urged the public to request rice “not paella.”

In fact she put it more quaintly some days ago when she was photographed in Alicante City with a placard that proclaimed, “Don’t ask por paella, ask por arroz.”

Is there a difference?

Alicantinos and Valencianos will waste no time in saying there is.  They will put  you right, with lengthy technological, historical and gastronomical explanations.  These will include the information that rice dishes are generally made in a wide, shallow pan with handles at each end which is called una paella in Valenciano. So, rather confusingly, is what’s created in it, hence the tendency to believe that anything made that way deserves the name paella.

Jamie Oliver might make something with chorizo and call it paella, and despite their protests, Valencianos would probably wolf it down happily while protesting that this is merely a rice-based dish. It might be cooked the same way, but it’s not paella, a concept that taps into a new sensitivity now noticeable in Alicante restaurants.

Where not so long ago it would be commonplace to order paella and, above all, a paella Alicantina, a glance at the menu reveals nothing of the kind although the client will find countless variations on Arroz a la Alicantina.

La Vanguardia, a Catalan daily paper that is widely read outside the region, quoted a Basque who was allegedly heard to ask while visiting Alicante, “Why is there no paella in a Valencia region city?”

Basques are famous foodies and the question must have been rhetorical, as he would have immediately seen that there was no shortage of the rice dishes that most people – and most Spaniards outside the Valencian Community –  innocently regard as paella.

Nevertheless in the not-so-distant past when paella Alicantina and paella Valenciana existed side-by-side on restaurant menus, there was always a difference.

The Alicante version has always heavy on seafood, especially shellfish, which tends to give the rice a distinctly non-paella texture.

A traditional paella Valenciana is based on rice, chicken, rabbit, green beans (runner or French), a handful of butter beans plus previously-grated tomato. Some cooks like to add artichokes when in season.

As anyone living in Alicante, Valencia and Castellon will explain, the dish can actually include anything – and that means absolutely anything – which comes to hand.  And this can include sausages of all descriptions, pigs’ trotters and snails although only a Valenciano would be brave enough to call it paella.