Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Paella

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Every country has a national dish, and Spain is no exception. The dish that most people associate with Spain is the rice dish known as paella.  Paella is, on the one hand, very simple, and on the other hand, very complex and confusing.  It also has a surprising history touching on almost every major period in Spanish history.  Learn more about paella, the national dish of Spain, and how it might technically even be Spanish on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors The Tourist Office of Spain This episode is sponsored by the Tourist Office of Spain.  There are many great places to visit in Spain, but one of my favorites has to be Valencia. Valencia was the first place I ever visited in Spain, and it has a special meaning for me.  It also happens to be the home of paella, as well as one of my favorite restaurants in Spain, Casa Montaña.  You can also visit the famous City of Arts and Sciences and view the exceptional structures designed by the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. If you’ve seen a recent science fiction TV or movie, there is a good chance they had a scent shot there.  And, if you happen to be in Valencia at noon on a Thursday, you can also witness the meeting of the Valencia Water Tribunal, the world’s oldest continuously operating democratic body.  If you want to plan your trip to Valencia or anywhere in Spain, you can get all the information you need at Spain.info.  Once again, that is Spain.info. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every country has a national dish, and Spain is no exception. The dish that most people associate with Spain is the rice dish known as paella. Paella is, on one hand, very simple, and on the other hand, it's rather complex and confusing. It also has a surprising history, touching on almost every major period in the history of Spain. Learn more about paella, the national dish of Spain, and how it might not even technically be Spanish, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by the Tourist Office of Spain. There are great many places to visit in Spain, but one of my favorite has to be Valencia.

Valencia was the first place that I ever visited in Spain, and so it has a special meaning for me. It also happens to be the home of Piaia, the subject of this episode, as well as one of my favorite restaurants in Spain, the Casa Mantana. You can also visit the famous city of arts and sciences and view the exceptional structures designed by the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. If you've seen a recent science fiction TV show or movie, there's a good chance that that they had a scene that was shot there. And if you happen to be in Valencia, at noon, on a Thursday,

you can also witness the meeting of the Valencia Water Tribunal, the world's oldest continually operating democratic body. It convenes just outside the Valencia Cathedral, which also just so happens to claim to be the location of the Holy Grail. If you want to plan your trip to Valencia or anywhere in Spain, you can get all the information you need at Spain.Info. Once again, that's Spain.info. If you aren't familiar with paella, I'll provide a brief description of the dish.

And for those of you who are not familiar with paella, you owe it to yourself to go and try some. The key to paella is rice. If there's one and only one thing you take away from this episode, it should be the fact that paella is a rice-based dish. Piaa is cooked in a wide flat pan, which is known as a paella. Piaa is just the Valencian word for pan, from which the dish gets its name. A proper paella pan is more than just a frying pan. A paella pan is very shallow and they can get very large. I once attended a conference in Spain and for lunch, which like all proper Spanish lunches

began at two in the afternoon, we had a giant paella, which had to be carried out by a team of six people. If you visit Spain, you'll be able to find shops that specialize in paella pans of all sizes, as it's something you usually wouldn't find in a normal kitchen store. Beyond saying that paella is a rice dish is where it gets tricky. Piaaea, to this extent, is a lot like. like pizza. You know a pizza when you see it, but beyond pizza dough, literally everything else about a pizza could change. There's no one single recipe for pizza, just like there's no one single

recipe for paella. To understand what paella is beyond just rice, it's important to understand the history of the dish. In the introduction of this episode, I said that paella may not technically be a Spanish dish. The reason for that is because paella wasn't something that was traditionally made all over Spain. It comes from one particular region in Spain, Valencia. To understand how this dish began in Valencia, we need to go all the way back to when the Romans ruled Spain. And the only thing you need to know about this period of time is that the Romans did not grow rice. There was no rice production anywhere in Spain, even though the area around Valencia was uniquely suited to it. However, the Romans did end up contributing two things that helped create paella. The first is

the pan itself, and the second is olive oil. If you remember, back to my episode on rice, it was probably first cultivated in southern China and then spread throughout Asia. So how in the world did it get all the way over to Spain on the far western end of the Eurasian landmass? That was due to the Islamic invasions that took place in the 8th century. The moors brought with them not only Islamic culture, but many of the crops that they learned to cultivate, including rice. This can be seen in the fact that the Spanish word for rice, aros, comes from Arabic, not Latin. By the 10th century, century, rice cultivation was firmly established in the region around Valencia. The reason why Valencia

became a rice-growing region was simply due to geography. There were flat plains and ample fresh water, which was available, especially from the nearby Albufara Lagoon. The Moors built an extensive irrigation system in the region to support rice production. If you remember way back, I did an episode on the Valencia Water Tribunal, which is the world's oldest continuous democratic body. They meet once a week in Valencia, and they were established to resolve water disputes between rice farmers. While the Moors brought rice to Spain, rice remained the primary agricultural product in the region around Valencia after the Reconquista and the final expulsion of the Moors in the 15th century. Some foods have a very definite origin story. We know exactly where and when it was created and who created it.

For example, nachos. But in the case of Paiaa, the origins are a bit more shrouded in history. The origin story, which is usually told, is that paella was a dish made by farm laborers who worked in the rice fields. Piaa was made on an open wood fire, and the workers added whatever they could find in the fields to their meal. This would include animals and pests that they found in the rice fields, usually including rabbits, chickens, ducks, and snails. From the fields, the dish then found its way into kitchens, and it became the defining dish for the Valencia region. When exactly Piaa first appeared is in some question. The most commonly given date is sometime in the early 18th century.

This is when the term paella first appeared in print. However, at that time, the word paella still referred to the pan, not the food itself. By the 19th century, this simple dish, which was created by Valencian rice farmers who just wanted to have lunch, had caught on. It began being cooked in the kitchen and at social get-togethers. It basically became the Valencian version of a barbecue. It wasn't until 1840 when a Valencian newspaper first referred to the dish as piaa, not just the pan it was cooked in. As the dish began to spread, people adapted it to whatever

they had at hand. Valencia is pretty close to the sea, so people who lived on the coast began to substitute rabbit and chicken with prawns and other seafood. Then other people mixed the two together to create a mixed paella. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, paella spread throughout Spain with more variations on the dish appearing as more people made it. However, for the most part, during this entire time, even though it was served outside of Valencia, it was still considered to be a Valencian dish. So how was it that this regional dish from one of the very few rice-producing regions in Spain ended up becoming the national dish representing all of Spain? That was actually the result of a very conscious decision made by one man in the 20th century. Spain, despite being a

single country, is actually a collection of regions with different foods, customs, and languages. But between In 1939 and 1975, Spain was ruled by a military dictator named Francisco Franco. Franco wanted to create a unified Spanish identity, so he took a best-in-class approach and took different things from different regions that he liked. Hence, many of the things we associate with Spain are, in fact, things that are really only part of one region's culture. Flamenco dancing, for example, is a product of Andalusia. You probably aren't going to see flamenco dancing in the boss country, unless it's explicitly part of something Andalusian. Well, when it came to food, it turned out that Franco really liked paella.

That was pretty much it. Franco liked it, so it was promoted as the Spanish national dish. After Spain returned to democracy in the 1970s, the perception of paella as the Spanish national dish sort of stuck, at least outside of Spain. As paella spread, Paya traditionalists began to push back on what they saw as the corruption of true Piaea. This is sort of the equivalent of pizza traditionalists saying that the only true pizza is Neapolitan pizza.

Piae Pira Piae Pia Porea is what's better known as Piaa Valenciana. Pia Valenciana usually consists of the following ingredients. A round grain rice, usually bomba rice, rabbit or chicken, saffron, garofo beans, which are a type of lime bean, and ferradura, which are a type of long, flat green bean from Valencia. This is all cooked in olive oil and chicken broth over an open fire. The saffron will give the entire dish a golden color. While these are the rough ingredients of the original Pia Valenciana, within Valencia you will still get a great deal of debate as to what makes the best paella.

During one of my trips to Valencia, I was able to go into the countryside and have a traditional pia lunch on one of the farms. And even there, at the very heart of Piaa country, I heard differing theories on how much juice versus how much. how dry a paellae should be. Everyone has slightly different recipes, which usually have something to do with how their grandmothers made it. One thing that most Valencians will agree on is that one of the best parts of paella is what's known as Socorat. Socorat is just the Valencian word for scorched, and it's the name of the rice at the bottom of the pan. To get this caramelized, crunchy rice,

you cannot stir the paella, which goes against every natural instinct you would have if you were sitting over a pan of paella. There are other customs and traditions associated with paella. For starters, paella usually isn't something you eat at dinner. It's something you eat as a midday meal. Chorizo is often added to paella, but purists consider it to be a no-no. However, some food historians have recently found out that chorizo was in fact used in paella's in the 19th century. If you are in Spain, there are some things you should know about ordering paella.

For starters, at every restaurant I've been to, unless they specialize in paella, you have to order it for two people. people, and I have seen this stipulation on the menu many times. To properly make a paella, it takes a few hours. So if you're ordering it off the menu, they may either just be warming something up that was frozen or refrigerated. Or if it takes at least 20 minutes, they may be making the rice fresh and just have the other ingredients pre-made. If you can, find a place that specializes in paella, where they probably have been cooking it for quite a while by the time you walk in. Despite the purists, you will find different types of paella even in Valencia. One unique type of paella that you might find is known as black paella.

Literally, everything in the paella is black, including the rice and the beans. And the dark color comes from squid ink. There is an entire online community that's recently sprung up around paella. In 2016, an emoji was approved for paella. Technically, the unicode name for it is shallow pan of food, but it clearly shows a seafood paella, which is actually the most popular type outside of Valencia. In 2013, a group of Paia enthusiasts launched Wiki Paiaa, a website devoted to Paiaaia. And in 2018, they inaugurated the world's first Paia Day, which is held on September

20th of every year. In the course of researching this episode, much of which came from my own Paia experiences in Valencia, I realized that many people listening to this may have never tried Paia. And I can say I've never had Paiaaia outside of Spain. I searched online, and I searched online, and found the closest place to me that serves it is actually a tapas restaurant about a 30-minute drive from where I live. So depending on where you are, you may have to go out of your way to find a place that actually serves it. Before I close, I want to address some of you who might be thinking that a rice-based dish like paella sounds awfully similar to dishes that are found in South Asia and the Middle East. Well, there might be a reason for that. In the course of doing research for this episode, one of the

most interesting theories I came across is that when the Islamic Caliphate came to Spain, they didn't just bring rice, they brought with them ways to prepare it. Arab traders had been trading with Persia and India for centuries. Dishes such as pilaf, pulao and biriani would have been familiar to them, and those who brought rice to Spain were probably already making similar dishes. These rice dishes, or at least something like them, were probably prepared before the creation of paella in the 18th century. So, it is a very important. It's very probable that the forerunner of Paia did in fact come from Persia or South Asia. So it turns out the national dish of Spain is really something that developed out of the single region of Valencia,

was popularized by a 20th century dictator using a product brought by Islamic farmers who may have gotten the original recipe from Asia. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Thomas Bayeen over on Podcast Republic. They write, I love your podcast so much. It's the best thing I've ever listened to. I'm proud to be a part of the Completionist Club from Eritrea.

I hope you can make a special episode about Eritrea someday. Keep up the great work. Thanks, Thomas. And I have to admit, I had no idea there was a completionist club chapter in Eritrea. It's one of the few completionist clubs in a country that I have not yet visited. But I hope to visit the club. in person someday and do a formal grand opening in Asmara. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.