Valencia's pride: what to put in paella - and drink with it

Plus: what I've been drinking this week

Left: big appetites at Valencia's Tastarròs 2023. Right: one of my takes on the classic, with cod cheeks, mussels, prawns

AUTUMN is definitively here in London, dank days and dark evenings. That will not deter me from cooking a paella for eight for a celebration lunch this weekend – though it’s possible the rain will force me to prepare it across several gas rings on the kitchen stove rather than on my Spanish multi-ring burner outside. More controversially, for paella purists, I will use seafood.

Spain’s great rice dish is the subject of more ferocious debates over authenticity than any other European classic – cassoulet included. For purists in Valencia, the home of paella, the only acceptable main ingredients other than the rice are rabbit and snails. Such hardliners reject seafood paellas, popular in Valencian restaurants as elsewhere, as heresy.

Michelin-starred Valencian chef Quique Dacosta, co-founder with my friend Marcos Fernández of the Iberica group of London paella restaurant Arros QD, once admitted to me that he wouldn’t put wine in his paella because the reaction on social media would be too fierce. And when Jamie Oliver posted a paella recipe online in 2016 that called for chorizo, Spaniards united in vitriolic condemnation of the idea.

But it’s not so simple. The first written-down paella recipes in the eighteenth century were very different from today’s, for example involving eel and cooked for much longer. In truth, its origins are as a country dish that varied according to what was available in a given place and season.

When in 2018 I was cooked a paella on the shores of the Albufera lake by Santos Ruiz, director of the body for Denominación de Origen-protected Valencian rice, he was surprisingly relaxed about the choice of ingredients. That day he used rabbit and several kinds of beans, but he explained that in his home village, just beans and artichokes were traditional in winter. Some villages use chicken – now the standard choice in Valencian homes; some meatballs, even. And snails are more typical of the agriculturally poorer area further south towards Alicante.

At this May’s Tastarròs festival, I joined Valencians wolfing down a wide variety of rices containing all sorts of fish, poultry and vegetables, including one involving beetroot, coloured shocking pink and served up in a heart-shaped paella (the name of the pan as well as the dish.)

That’s before you even get to the wetter versions of the dish popular up and down the whole Spanish Levantine coast. Arroz meloso is a little sloppier – and easier to cook right: in May, the finest rice dish of my visit was the matchless meloso at venerable local institution Rausell. Meanwhile Arroz caldoso (“soupy”) can be closer to a bouillabaisse with added rice, and I’ve enjoyed versions of it north into the Costa Brava.

Where authentic paella does demand skill – or judgment – is at the end of cooking, when the stock has been absorbed and the rice, starting to gelatinate, begins to catch on the bottom of the pan. This is the crunchy socarrat prized by Valencians – and I freely admit that my socarrat results can be variable. To get to this point, even cooking is crucial. Purists are adamant that you cannot add more part-way through nor stir it, for fear of breaking the grains

But as Dacosta told me: “The most important thing for me is not whether this is the true paella, but whether you are making paella at home. We’re not perfect in the Mediterranean.” In Valencia, paella is a family dish cooked with everyone helping.

As for the best wine to drink with it, paella is pretty flexible. I often drink red Rioja or Ribera del Duero, or rosé on a summer’s day – though I enjoy it most with robust whites. White Rioja works well: I love the rich, traditional Allende Blanco 2017, Rioja (currently N/A UK, was at the Wine Society) and Txabola 2021 from amazing Rioja Alavesa producer Maisulan is sublime with seafood paella (N/A UK, €15 ex-cellar.)

But I must confess that the wine I’ve enjoyed most with this classic rice dish isn’t Spanish at all, but rather Clos des Cazaux’s astonishing Vacqueyras Blanc Vielles Vignes 2021 (The Wine Society, £47 en magnum only). Made from 60 year-old vines, mostly clairette, this is a robust but complex white Rhône for a special occasion. It’s evidently not traditional – but surely less of an outrage to tradition than putting chorizo in your paella.

·       For a reliable paella recipe, the Guardian’s Felicity Cloake’s is one of the best I know.

·       For the best and most authentic paella in London, Arros QD remains the undisputed choice.

What I’ve been drinking this week

Château La Lagune 1990, Haut-Médoc - I don’t drink much Bordeaux and almost none this starry: this old bottle was a treat, brought to dinner by neighbours who say they were given a job lot by the outraged wife of a philandering claret collector. It’s definitely on its downward slope but still very much alive, elegant with lovely classic mature Médoc leather and cigar-box flavours (around £100 if you can find it.)

Champagne Michel Rocourt Blanc de Blancs Premier Cru NV, non-dosé - I visited Rocourt in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger in September this year, during harvest, where they squeezed in a tasting for me after breakfast. This is nice crisp, clean grower Champagne with touch of weight from 27 months on its lees (N/A UK; €22 ex-cellar.)

Château Musar 2017, Bekaa Valley - I was a Musar devotee even before my first trip to Lebanon in 2008, when I met then-proprietor, the late but legendary Serge Hochar; after that, my admiration only grew. This is the current vintage, released after customary long bottle ageing, and it doesn’t disappoint: one of the most instantly recognisable, spicy bouquets in wine; rich, concentrated berry fruit; complex and just gorgeous (widely available, around £41 – though was £35.50 from the Wine Society en primeur inc duty and VAT.)