:shudder:

+1. How Can Paella be "vegetarian? No way. No how. Wouldn't that just be saffron rice with peas?

This brings me back to my annoyance that every rice dish cooked in a paella pan in North America gets called 'paella'.

The most celebrated arroz dish made with vegetables in Spain is called "Arroz con verduras" (sometimes "arroz huertano") and is a speciality of Murcia.
It might look like a paella, it might be cooked in a paella pan... but it isn't paella.

http://www.regmurcia.com/servlet/s.S...43,m,272,idt,0

This is the arroz dish I make most for myself. If I were to dare call it 'paella' my family would lynch me.

Still - the description makes it look more 'authentic' for that area of Spain than most of the so called 'paellas' being offered on Socarrat's menu (so I have less of a problem with it than the barbaric surf & turf tourist creation; 'paella mixta')

The strangest part of Socarrat's menu is the inclusion of pork in the 'Paella Valenciana'. Valencia is a huge region that encompasses Alicante and Castell�n and I'm aware that lard/pork/ribs are used in some parts of Valencia (perhaps in areas of Castell�n* to the North nearer Catalonia as I've never see in it used in Alicante) but this is hardly typical and pork is not the obvious ingredient that a Valencian would add to a 'paella Valenciana'. Very, very odd!

(Just checked and it is indeed a speciality of the Vall d'Uixo area in Castell�n)

Here's an interesting viewpoint from another Valencian that was published recently in a local paper.

http://blogs.lasprovincias.es/fernan...las-no-paellas

Fernando Mart�nez Castellano - published 1st Aug 2009
(the following is my own translation)

"Three friends of mine are currently putting together, with permits and whatever else is required, an organisation that they consider to be necessary for these turbulent times. They will present the required documents to the relevant administration in order to be able to take action throughout Spain, from the Ramblas in Barcelona to the beach shacks.

The group want to call themselves the "Corrective Association of the Non-Paellas which dare to call themselves Paellas". Yes, it's a long name, but, at a stroke, the message is fully conveyed.

It's hardly worth mentioning that the three founding members are paella lovers. That is, real honest-to-goodness paellas, those made with the local varieties of green beans and fava beans, of rabbit and chicken, the odd snail and that final addition of a rosemary sprig. Each of them represents a different aspect of what surrounds a dish. Pedro, a genuinely knowledgeable gastronome, Jos� Mar�a, accomplished restauranteur and the third, Carlos, expert eater and paella base toasted socarrat scraper. They don't consider themselves to be purists but regard themselves merely as defenders of that which is made in the proper way.

And this is precisely what has pushed these three friends to invest part of their time in getting the idea going and ordering the fabrication of hundreds of large stickers. Some of them in red bearing the message "You won't find Paella here", others in green with the words "These are definitely Paellas".

Lately, and curiously enough the current financial crisis has had nothing to do with it, anything made in a paella pan is being classified as "paella". And so we are observing things like rice with chistorra sausage, or a mussel melange, or with poached eggs being given the name 'paella with chistorra', or 'mussel paella', or paella with poached eggs'. Any old stew is getting called paella just as any old brew is called coffee.

The serious side to this, and it isn't about applying some redundant purist sensibility, is that we are allowing a dish, a food, which forms part of the culinary heritage of our region to be trampled into the ground. It's got nothing to do with globalisation and who has the right to use the 'brand', it's about having a bit of good taste. And that's what these three friends are about."

You will get the same phenomenon with paella as you do with salade nicoise, waterzooi, choucroute, boeuf bourguignon, osso bucco, etc...

The search for culinary purity is a bit like the search for linguistic purity: always a losing battle. As soon as a dish gets a modicum of international notoriety (or even national notoriety), variations will appear that depart from the 'real mccoy'. And so should there be: an intelligent cook will adapt a recipe to locally available ingredients rather than having the 'authentic' ingredients shipped thousands of miles in a state of dubious freshness. Even within a country, there can be raging battles as to what constitutes the 'authentic' recipe for a dish. Move from an area of Southwest France to another area of Southwest France to hear them say how THEIR interpretation of cassoulet is the genuine article and how they do it in the next village is an awful concoction, which is an absolute disgrace and nothing like real cassoulet. This increases with distance: look at Italo-American cuisine which often has only a passing resemblance to what is served in Italy.

Truth is, what is understood as paella in the Valencia region and the international word "paella" are very different things. You can get apoplectic about it but this would not be very different to saying that what is spoken in most Latin American countries is not proper Spanish or what is spoken in North America or in Australia is not proper English.

It seems more sensible to me to set one's expectations aside and not expect a "paella" in L.A., Stockholm, Bangkok, Dublin or Paris to mean the same thing as a "paella" in Valencia. What is more objectionable is when local restaurants pass off as authentic something which is far removed from local tradition. But then, there always have been good restaurants and incompetent con-artists everywhere.

Far be it from me to comment here, given I've never had the dish, but this seems to me to be a bad comparison.

However gross or watered down or removed from the fine European traditions it is, anything made by mixing coffee grounds and water is coffee. I've never heard anyone claim that the ubiquitous American weakly brewed drip coffee cup is any less of a coffee than a strong doppio perfectly pulled from the finest Italian roast. They're just two different styles.

I'm not saying that paella with chorizo is paella--I'll let the Spaniards define the dish as they want. I'm just saying that the above comparison doesn't make sense.

Yes. I've had them in Europe several times. Love them.

Unfortunately, I am not a fan of paella mainly because I am not fond of shellfish other than scallops, shrimp/prawn and lobster. I did have a chicken paella once and that was very tasty...

I believe the point the Valencian I translated may have been making is that once upon a time caf� (coffee) would have meant something. But the popularity of coffee, over several centuries, has meant that the word is pretty much meaningless by itself now.

I find it a very apt comparison.

This thread; "Do You Like Paella?" is just as irrelevant and meaningless as a thread called "Do You Like Coffee?" as people who have never had anything other than instant coffee in their lives are comparing their experiences to those who use freshly ground beans.

The article is written by someone commentating on this very reality and his hopes that this can be changed by more awareness of what "paella" actually means... that it isn't a name that can be applied to anything made with rice in the way that (just as you have pointed out) "coffee" can be applied to anything made with coffee beans or coffee essence or anything coffee related at all.

In other words, it seems that you do like authentic paella.

It's the pretend 'paella' crap that people mistakenly think of as authentic that you're not so fond of.

Given that I have a psychological objection to eating invertebrates, I look forward to trying an authentic paella someday safe in the knowledge that I won't encounter these!

Of course, the possibility of the odd snail being thrown in is enough to make me think twice...

All right, already.

+1. Some people have far too much time on their hands.