Paella

As the writer David Rosengarten put it in Saveur magazine, paella “exists because of rice.” Other experts concur. Sarah Jay, former editor of Fine Cooking magazine and a self-taught paella expert who has devoted the past twenty years to selling proper pans and spreading paella gospel, says, “Paella is all about the rice.” And the history of paella bears this out. Rice was brought to Spain by Arabs who had settled on the Iberian Peninsula and began to grow rice in the marshy fields on the eastern coast of Spain. This is important in terms of our agreeing on what “authentic” paella actually is, because, of course, as with cassoulet, much debate surrounds what constitutes a true paella and its exact technique.