For the day that’s in it and because I fear The Scary One is leaving us with ‘heat-ups’ (her word for leftovers) tonight, let’s pile in on World Paella Day.
It’s a date on the calendar I should have marked in her diary alongside our anniversary which was three days ago but didn’t.
So it’s just as well that my old amigi Sara and Kathryn from the Spanish Tourist Board in Dublin flagged it up.
By inviting the cream of Irish Travel (I’m confined to barracks just now) out for a big paella.
Which is paella round-grain rice, bajoqueta and tavella (varieties of green beans), rabbit, chicken, sometimes duck, and the lima or butter bean garrofo, cooked in olive oil and chicken broth.
Mellow yellow
With the yellow colour we know and love infused by saffron.
Paella, meaning frying pan in Spanish, has come to be the city and the country’s biggest food export.
But foodies will tell you that the dish derives from Valencia, while historians will point to the Moors from North Africa who introduced rice cultivation.
Paella is of course international now and the Valencians even host a World Paella Cup with the best chefs from around the world.
And thankfully without those ubiquitous ‘celebrity chefs’ we have all come to loathe.
You know the ones who pimp their paellas like mock cockney Jamie Oliver who uses chorizo by Jamie Oliver or the rice, chicken, squid, chorizo and clam version by chef Gordon Ramsay.
OK, I don’t have anything against you putting in whatever the heck you like into the pan to make your paella because after all anything with rice in a paella, or pan, is eh, a paella.
It’s just Oliver’s fake chumminess and Ramsay’s fake fecking puts me off my food.
Although writer Ana Vega ‘Biscayenne’, citing historical references, showed that traditional Valencian paella did indeed include chorizo.
And he exclaimed: ‘Ah Jamie, we’ll have to invite you to the Fallas.’
Paella on the pounds
And what we all want to know in these straitened times is can it feed the masses?
Well Valencia restaurateur Juan Galbis claims to have made the world’s largest paella with help from a team of workers on 2 October 2001.
He claims to have fed about 110,000 people and this is even larger than his earlier world-record paella on 8 March 1992, which fed about 100,000 people.
Galbis’ record-breaking 1992 paella is listed in Guinness World Records.
So pile in on World Paella Day, there’s enough for everyone.
