Paella de Marisco

The story

Paella takes its name from the pan: in Valencian, paella simply means frying pan. Visit València, the city's tourism board, places the dish's beginnings in the sixteenth century in the rice fields of the Albufera, where farm laborers cooked rice with whatever they had on hand. The classic paella valenciana still uses chicken, rabbit, flat green beans and garrofó, a large white bean, with saffron, sweet paprika and rosemary. Seafood paella belongs to the same rice tradition, built on fish stock instead of meat. Valencian households tend to keep land and sea apart, cooking either a garden paella or one with fish and shellfish rather than the mixed version. Tourism carried paella around the world in the twentieth century. In Valencia it is a midday meal, cooked in a wide, shallow pan and shared from the middle of the table, each diner eating the wedge in front of them. The prize is the socarrat, the thin layer of rice that toasts and crisps on the bottom. Spanish restaurants usually cook paella to order for a minimum of two, so a paella for two is a normal size. Serve it with lemon wedges, a green salad and a dry white wine.