Marie-Claire Digbyvisits Valencia in search of the city's authentic rice dish.
AS A TOURIST destination, Valencia seems to have it all. Spain's third-largest city has antiquity: the old town is peppered with baroque, Gothic, Romanesque and art-deco architecture; modernity: the awesome City of Arts and Sciences is a sparkling testimony to the genius of the city's favourite son, the architect Santiago Calatrava; and easy access to sea and mountains when urban life begins to pale.
It's also a city that knows how to party, a trait that was exploited to the full last summer when it hosted the prestigious America's Cup sailing event on its European debut. The fiesta continues this year, when the Grand Prix of Europe, a new Formula 1 race, will be run on an urban circuit in the city's rejuvenated America's Cup port area (August 23rd-24th).
Valencia is also the birthplace of paella - real paella, that is, not the microwave-to-table version too often served up on the costas. In Valencia, if you are asked "Do you want snails with that?" it's really not a trick question. Rice dishes - dry ones such as paella, as well as creamy ones (melosos) and soupy ones (caldosos), all made with short, fat and thirsty local varieties of rice, such as Bomba, Bahia and Senia - are the thumbprints of Valencian cuisine. And they're made with what's to hand; even snails.
If snails aren't available, some cooks add a sprig of rosemary to the dish, as it is said to provide a similar flavour. But there were plentiful displays of them on offer at Caracoles Selectos (Select Snails), in the Mercado Central, Valencia's famed indoor market, reputed to be the largest in Europe (a claim sometimes disputed by Barcelona's Boqueria market).
"The farmed ones are better, but they're more expensive, because they have to be fed special snail food," a stallholder explains. At €3 for 250g they're not too expensive, but for some reason I'm not tempted by them. Neither am I too hot about the eels, another local delicacy that not so long ago local cooks preferred to bring home from the market alive, still wriggling in plastic bags.
This bright, buzzing market, a refreshing relic from the early-20th-century modernist period, is always thronged with shoppers who haven't yet forsaken it for supermarkets. After extensive renovations, the scaffolding on the interior of the building came down last year, just in time to host Prada's glittering America's Cup party for its team, Luna Rossa, and their 1,000 guests.
The 850sq m covered market - home to 956 vendors - is the best place to begin an exploration of Valencia's rice-cooking traditions and to embark on "the paella trail", as the regional tourist board describes its suggested itinerary of shopping, cooking and eating.
Begin by checking out the fish stalls, the cured-meat vendors, the butchers and the huge array of produce brought in from Valencia's famed huertas, or market gardens.
This is also the place to pick up a paella, as the wide, shallow pan used to cook the dish is also called. They can be bought for as little as a couple of euro, but if you're going to the trouble of carrying one home, spend a bit more - €12 was the price tag on the heavy-duty, 42cm one I settled on.
"Don't forget to wash it with hot water and vinegar, then rub it all over with oil before using it for the first time," commanded the trader as she tossed a recipe sheet into my bag. Stock up on Spanish paprika, saffron, rice and olive oil while you're at the market, as the quality is excellent and the prices far lower than in Ireland.
So, have pan, can cook . . . but maybe not a proper, authentic paella. Where to begin?
"Never was a dish so misunderstood, so misrepresented, so abused as paella," writes Paul Richardson in his entertaining book, A Late Dinner: Discovering the Food of Spain (Bloomsbury, £16.99 in UK). "The crimes committed in the name of the Spanish national dish - mostly by Spaniards themselves - are horrible to relate," Richardson says.
It's true that the paella most often eaten by visitors to Spain is the Andalusian seaside concoction of meat, fish and shellfish, a dish that at its best can be very good but is often not good at all. In Valencia, however, combining fish and meat in a paella is akin to suggesting to an Italian that he put a few pineapple chunks on his pizza.
Fish, or more usually shellfish, cooked with rice does make an appearance in the region's culinary repertoire, but the traditional paella Valenciana is a modest dish with humble origins. It is made with local rice, some rabbit, chicken or, occasionally, wild duck, green beans, butter beans, tomato, saffron, paprika and, perhaps, a handful of mountain snails - small, white-shelled molluscs with thin black stripes - and cooked outdoors on a fire of orange wood as a sustaining lunch for the workers in the rice fields.
It is still possible to find paella Valenciana cooked in this manner, over wood, but to do so you'll have to travel outside the city, to the rice-growing areas or the mountains. Rice, which was introduced here 1,200 years ago by the Arabs, is a cornerstone of the region's economy as well as of its gastronomy. It is still cultivated on a large scale, in irrigated paddy fields - muddy flats in winter and lush green plains in summer, which surround L'Albufera, a freshwater lagoon and nature reserve 15km south of the city.
At the family-run El Matandeta, in the flat, brown rice fields that will be transformed into swathes of green over the spring and summer months, Manolo Baixauli has been cooking paella over wood fires for more than 60 years. He reckons he has made about 12,000 of them. In a tar-coated open-air shed, a startling contrast to the shiny new stainless-steel kitchen alongside, Baixauli unlocks the secrets of a good paella.
Working by sight and by taste, without measuring anything, Baixauli first adds a good sluice of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt to a hot pan. Then he browns off the meats and adds the beans and a spoonful of fresh tomato - "not too much tomato", he cautions.
Saffron powder, paprika, a pinch each of rosemary and salt, and then the stock hit the pan, followed by the rice. We skip the snails, I confess.
Like a good Martini, paella can be shaken but not stirred, and after a few deft flicks of the wrist, to loosen the starch in the rice grains, the maestro stands by his charge, expertly feeding the fire under each bubbling pan to ensure even cooking and the formation of the all-important soccarrat, the crusty layer of flavoursome toasted rice that adheres to the base of the pan. Some 15 minutes later it is cooked to his satisfaction.
A further five-minute resting time, off the heat, for the rice to suck up the remaining caldo (broth) completes the process.
So is it good? Oh, yes, and all the better for its simplicity and authenticity.
Where to stay
Marie-Claire Digby stayed at Hotel Neptuno (2 Paseo de Neptuno, 46011 Valencia, 00-34-96-3567777, www.hotelneptunovalencia.com), a modern boutique hotel in the heart of Port America's Cup, on Malvarrosa beach. Double rooms from €125 per night, including breakfast.
Where to eat
When you've had enough paella, head to Casa Montaña (69 Calle Jose Benlliure, near Port America's Cup; www. emilianobodega.com) for a choice of more than 30 great tapas in an atmospheric bar lined with giant wine casks. Pull up a stool and make sure to order the anchoas (anchovies), croquetas de bacalao (salt-cod croquettes) and michirones (broad beans). With more than 20,000 bottles of wine in the cellars, you should find something to suit.
Have lunch or dinner at Venta L'Home (exit Venta Mina km306, 00-34-962503515, www.ventadelhome.com), a 300-year-old former coaching inn situated near the town of Buñol.
Where to go
The city breaks up into three distinct areas: the old town, the new town (around the City of Arts and Sciences) and the port area and beachfront, which benefited from a huge facelift in advance of last year's America's Cup. All are readily accessible and linked by a tram and metro system, as well as by buses and taxis.
Valencia Guias (www.valenciaguias.com) organises walking (€15) and bike (€25) tours of the city. The guides are multilingual mines of information about the history of the city.
The Utiel-Requena wine region is less than an hour's drive north of Valencia, and a wine route has been designed (www.rutavino.com) that offers one- and two-day wine-tasting and gastronomy tours, costing from €30. The 90-minute tour at La Finca de Cadenas, a modern winery just outside Utiel, is highly recommended, as it offers access to the owner's 200-year-old farmhouse as well as to the vineyard (www.hoyadecadenas.es).
On the return journey, stop off at Requena to visit the fascinating La Villa Caves running underneath the town (www.requena.es).
Boat trips on the Albufera lagoon, which is home to an estimated 250 species of birds, are a peaceful way to spend an afternoon, and it is also possible to visit one of the historic thatched houses, or barracas, that line the shore. There is a tourist bus to the village of El Palmar, from where the boats leave; a taxi will cost about €25.
Book a boat trip at any of the 25 paella restaurants in the village. Negotiate a price in the region of €20 for a 45-minute cruise for between one and five people, and €4 per person for numbers greater than five.
The City of Arts and Sciences is a must-do. Even if you don't go into any of the futuristic buildings, it's a lovely place to walk around. See www.cac.es for a programme of what's on.
All the big Spanish chains, such as Zara, Mango, Massimo Dutti and Pull and Bear, are represented on the city's main streets, with prices about a third lower than they are here. There are lots of small, quirky boutiques stocking something more exclusive, in the area around the Colón Market in the city centre.
See www.comunitat valenciana.com for more information about the region.
Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies to Valencia from Dublin and to Alicante from Dublin and Shannon. Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus. com) flies from Dublin to Alicante. Alicante airport is two hours by train from Valencia.