Josep Piera reveals the secret: what is and what is not a Valencian paella?

LleidaPaella sparks discussions even on the day it appears as a prize. On March 1st, the day Òmnium Cultural awarded Josep Piera (Beniopa, 1947) the Prize of Honor for Catalan Letters, the entity did so with a Valencian paella, large in diameter, but, alas!, the debate began. "That it was white, and not yellow, that it wasn't right for me to be given the prize along with a paella because it was associating me with a cliché, it was even said that from now on Majorcans should receive prizes with ensaïmades, and Catalans, with botifarra and beans", calmly explains the writer Josep Piera in Lleida, where he has gone to participate in the Lleida Poetry Festival. But if Josep Piera has dedicated dozens of pages to paella! If he has dedicated countless hours of study to paella! If the angels sing to the paella that Josep Piera cooks!

It is always like this with paella. Fortunately, it is also linked to celebration, and therefore it balances the scales. "It has this meaning from ancient times, dating back to the East," he explains, which influenced the preparation of paella until the 19th century, when until then it was cooked with spices, with many spices. "As we have become Westernized, we have forgotten the spices of the East," he adds. Saffron, too: "Saffron lasted into the 20th century, but it was lost after the war because it was expensive, and it is from then on that it is replaced by coloring and, consequently, the golden color begins to assert itself," says Piera, who remarks that paella engages all the senses, the eyes, the smell, the taste, and the sound that the grain of rice makes when we bite it.

With the cooking point of the rice grain, the writer pauses for a moment. He drinks a sip of the coffee we have for breakfast, and tackles another of the dish's great debates. "A paella is good if the cooking point of the rice is correct, which means it should be neither raw, nor al dente, nor overcooked", he says. A paella is theantirrisotto, because "risotto must be stirred, very cooked, it's like a rice mass"; on the contrary, "the rice in a paella should never be shaken or stirred". That's why they are such contrary dishes, one and the other. If there is consensus on the cooking level of rice, "is there on the authentic recipe of paella?", asks the writer, and he himself answers: "It depends on the degree of irony I have, I answer one way or another, because with paella there is only one essential fact: it is a collective meal, traditionally from the countryside, in which everyone ate from the same paella, as also happens with other Mediterranean dishes, such as couscous, which is also originally a collective food". And since it was eaten outdoors, each person had their own spoon, their own, which they brought from home. "It was a flat spoon, like a shovel, and not a soup spoon for folding broth - underlines Piera -. With the shovel-type spoon you can pick up the rice from the center, bring it to the side of the paella, which we touch with the shovel so that the grain stays compact, and then we move the spoon to the mouth, so that the rice doesn't fall on the way". Eating a paella, then, with one's own spoon collectively "is not for savages", as has sometimes been said: "Whoever says we are savages for eating it like this is because they show they are by saying it, because the food has clear rules of coexistence and education".

And, that said, let's start talking about the variants of paella. "Not everything goes, because you have to know how to mix the ingredients," he says. Paella is not rice with things, and, despite this, paella has seasons: "There is winter paella, spring paella, summer paella, and autumn paella, and also sea and mountain paella." There are only three fixed ingredients in a paella, which are olive oil, rice grains, and salt (precisely those that have suffered the most impact from inflation); the others vary. Let's give examples. "The "sorollista" paella is the one invented by the seaside restaurants, who thought that the marsh paella, with snails and eels, was poor. Since the painter Joaquim Sorolla is the painter of the sea, the paella began to include prawns and langoustines." And the example explains why paella became "bourgeois" when it reached restaurants. "The classic Valencian was the garden paella, the so-called blasquista" by the writer Vicent Blasco Ibáñez, which includes chicken, eels, snails; that is, marsh products, from wet land."

Paella, then, has variants, it is made with different products depending on the season, but what about onion? Why is it sacrilege to put onion in a paella? "Because we make the sofrito only with tomato; I only put one, but there is no need for so much visceralism with onion because there is a wonderful paella, which my father loved, which is made with spring onion and tender garlic". The onion is cooked over low heat until it is confited; then the cod is added and, finally, the rice. "So, it is not that onion harms the rice, nor that it is not traditional, because if we start the debate about what is traditional, we should not add tomato, because it arrived from America at the end of the 15th century".

To continue, paella is pure intuition. "I know there are robots that can make it, and I understand the industry that needs to make paellas with robots, but paella is craftsmanship, it's an ephemeral work of art that, when eaten, makes us feel the joy of living". A paella cooked by a robot may be excellent, but it will never have the same taste as a handmade one. Josep Piera himself cooks paellas when family and friends ask him to. "I need helpers, who have to prepare each of the ingredients in dishes for me. From here I'll take care of the rest, I'm in charge". He makes the fire himself, with wood that burns quickly because the paella is cooked over a flame, not embers. "It doesn't matter if it's orange tree wood, which is good because it burns quickly, but pine or eucalyptus wood is also good", he says. He explains the following steps with his eyes closed, and above all emphasizing at what moment each of the ingredients is added. The first, the meat, which must be browned slowly, always making sure it doesn't remain raw. The last, the rice.To conclude, why did Valencian food become a universal icon? "Paris, the inventor of gastronomy, cooked Valencian-style rice, as the food was called before being named paella, and turned it into the current features, a festive dish". Later, "the Spanish monarchs, the Bourbons, of French origin, wanted to imitate France, and wanted to create the concept of Madrid cuisine, which did not exist". They sought to imitate the concept of "Parisian cuisine", and to fill in what did not exist, they chose two dishes: Biscayan cod and Valencian paella. "It was the Bourbon, Francophone idea, with which they wanted to strengthen the holy unity of the homeland", says Piera. With the food in the restaurants of Paris and in the kitchens of Madrid, it soon reached the United States. Paella caught on there because it is a country with a strong Jewish component, which has chicken and rice as a dish to celebrate the Sabbath, the day of rest. The paella should be golden

In El llibre daurat (Pòrtic), the writer Josep Piera explains in detail the history of food, and, among the curiosities, there is the comparison with the Catalan "arròs a la cassola". "The Catalans went on rice outings to Font del Gat like the Valencians went for paella in l'Albufera or El Cabanyal. The outing was the same: spending the day in good company, well-fed and well-watered, in nature... Like the ancient patricians, despite being the moderns of the time".