EATING a piece of UNESCO heritage might not be on your weekend to-do list – after all, biting into the Alhambra Palace or taking a nibble of the Segovia aqueduct would, at best, disappoint in terms of flavour, and probably at least knock a few teeth out.
But when that UNESCO heritage is paella, it's in the Sunday in-tray for a huge percentage of families in the eastern coastal provinces.
When told paella 'comes from Valencia' and that they 'need to go there' to try the 'real thing', many make the mistake of heading for Spain's third-largest city – they will still get a brilliant paella, but when describing its origins as 'Valencia', what we mean is the region, not just its biggest metropolitan area.
So, those who want to get a taste of this most international of Spain's dishes 'where it came from' can go to Valencia city if they wish, but in any town or village across the provinces of Alicante, Valencia or Castellón, an area about the size of Wales with around five million inhabitants, they will find an equally-authentic paella.
Also, what non-Spaniards might call 'paella' is not necessarily: Literally hundreds of recipes for it exist, but many hundred more that look like a variation on it are simply called 'rice with'.
On a menu translated into English, 'rice with beans and turnips', for example, will probably be written as 'bean and turnip paella', so diners have a better vision of what they might be ordering and will not just picture a plateful of boiled white rice with a few vegetables in it.
If it's not actual 'paella' but 'rice with', it will still taste paella-like to the average diner, but will be written as arroz con.
'Paella Valenciana' is probably what you are more used to seeing – a 'surf and turf' version, its ingredients include meat and seafood – although seafood paella without meat, or even vegetarian paella with neither, are equally as commonly-sighted, and eaten, in restaurants across the entire region.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com