Rice, spice, all things nice

And then there was rice, arroz or, in Arabic, arruzz. This millennial-old grain from China came via Iraq to Al-Andalus in the 10^th century It was to be the most lasting of all the agricultural imports, as the vast rice fields once worked by the Moors still mirror the skies in the lagoons of the Albufera, south of Valencia, in the Pego marshlands near Alicante, in Murcia, and south of Seville. Here they grow medium and short-grain rice, as well as the magical bomba, an ancient grain able to absorb two or three times its volume in water, thus absorbing maximum flavor.