Arroz Negro

I have an image burned into my brain of the hellish sight of scores of gas burners cooking scores of paella in Restaurante de Arroz — a special paella house in Alicante. There, paella are made to order but instead of making the sofrito from scratch they have hundreds of paella pans filled with ready-made sofrito lined up like pizza bases in a pizza restaurant. It was here that we had an arroz negro. It’s a rich dish of cuttlefish in black rice, which has been flavoured