Spanish 'Biryani' For The Indian Palate

By Roger Alexander

As Indian holidaymakers discover Spain at long last, can Spanish food be far behind in becoming the flavour of the season. Definitely not for Indian palates, since Spanish cuisine has a lot in common with Indian food.

The mainstay of the cuisine is rice, bread, and lentils. Saffron is an important ingredient and their national dish, the paella (pronounced pa-ye-ya) is suspiciously like a seafood biryani and, like Indian cuisine, tomatoes and chillies, although inseparable from Spanish cuisine, actually came much later after Columbus’s discovery of America.

Curiously, despite the fact that Spanish cooking is on the minds of gourmands around the globe - with El Bulli, the legendary restaurant near Barcelona, continuing to capture the spotlight and tapas having spawned an explosion in wine bars - paella, one of Spain’s most beloved dishes, hasn’t found a place on many restaurant menus. Indeed, here in India you can get it only at a Spanish food festival. But it’s catching on.

Not only does paella make a stunning visual statement – see yummy images above - it’s unbeatable for that dramatic entrance but it also takes care of itself for the last half hour of its cooking time, leaving you free to toss together a salad or put the final touches on a platter to serve as a starter. And you can even make it on the grill.

When you hear “paella”, you automatically think of seafood paella. However, the original paella doesn’t involve seafood at all. It comes from Valencia and involves rabbit, snails, sometimes chicken, never seafood; it’s an inland dish, the rice cooked in the paella pan with a very simple seasoning sauce. Even adding onion is something of a heresy, say experts. But there are no hard and fast rules.

Indeed, in the pantheon of great international party dishes, paella is probably the most misunderstood. A delightfully flexible meal, the only required ingredients are rice, water and olive oil, everything else is fair game. So if you shun meat, there’s vegetarian paella just for you.

As you can see in the pictures, pine nuts, potatoes, cauliflower, red pepper and other vegetables can be used to recreate the authentic taste.

What defines paella is the pan: The word comes from the Latin patella, a shallow pan. The pan absolutely has to be a paella pan, or it’s not paella. The whole idea is it needs as much surface heat on the bottom as possible so it cooks properly.

The paella pan always has two handles and come in different diameters, much like our own shallow kadhais. When you buy one, it’ll need to be seasoned; then after you cook with it and wash it, dry it thoroughly and wipe it with vegetable oil.

It’s important to use a pan that’s the right diameter for the amount of rice you’re cooking, as the layer of rice shouldn’t be very deep; ideally, no more than half an inch.

Though it’s not the original dish, seafood paella is extremely popular on the Valencian coast, where it’s served at seaside seafood shacks.

In Valencia and Alicante, the two regions paella rules in Spain, meatballs, pork, sausages and pine nuts are used, as well as potatoes, cauliflower, chard, red pepper and other vegetables.

Here you can use any of the vegetables and meats available in the high-end food stores or whatever looks great at the local greengrocer’s.

But whatever you embellish it with, the important thing to remember is paella is all about the rice.

The short- to medium-grained white rice (not basmati) is the best ones to use for paella for you want it to absorb as much flavour as possible, and cooked just enough to retain a somewhat firm texture, with the grains keeping their integrity. And the seafood or meats and vegetables shouldn’t overwhelm the rice.

The technique for making paella is simple. Start with the meats and vegetables, sautéing them in olive oil. Push them to the edges of the paella pan, and add a little more olive oil to the centre of the pan, along with some crushed garlic or onion, cooking just till it’s fragrant.

Next, add fresh tomatoes that have been grated on a box grater. That’s the seasoning sauce, or sofrito. (Grating the tomatoes is easier than it sounds, and results in a quick, fluffy pure; discard the skins.)

Stir the tomato into the oil and garlic or onion and cook it six or seven minutes until it’s reduced and thickened.

Combine the meats or seafood with the sofrito, add the rice and stir to coat it. At this point, you can stop the process, and time the rest to when you want to serve it. That’s actually good for its flavour.

About 40 or 45 minutes before you want to serve it, resume cooking. Heat the rice again, and add simmering stock or broth into which you've added a generous pinch of good saffron threads that you crush with your fingers. The proportion is important: For 1 3/4 cup rice, add 4 cups stock. (You can adjust the stock up or down depending on how much rice you use.)

Cook it on high heat for seven or eight minutes until the liquid is almost level with the rice, but the rice is still soupy.

Now put it in a hot oven, uncovered, or on a grill, for 15 minutes. Remove the pan, cover it with foil, and let it sit five minutes, then uncover it and let it stand another 5 or 10 minutes.

Grasp the paella pan by its two handles and bring it straight to the table. A group swooning is guaranteed.

(Adapted from The New Spanish Table by Anya von Bremzen)

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