Spanish paella: from humble peasant meal to rice dish famous around the world, and loved by Asians
- The origins of paella date back centuries in Spain to the arrival of Moors from North Africa. Its main ingredient of rice gave it an inherently Asian influence
- The dish flourished in the Valencia region because it has ideal conditions to grow rice, but the original version did not have seafood, rather chicken and duck
Spanish paella, nowadays usually an aromatic combination of mussels, prawns, clams, squid, vegetables and chicken with saffron rice, cooked in a large pan, is a dish popular dish around the world, but finding an example of the original recipe isn’t so easy.
It’s probably not “the real thing” unless the recipe comes from a specific region of Spain, and if it includes seafood – as most popular paellas do – it’s definitely just another variant.
The birthplace of paella is the autonomous Valencian Community in the east of Spain, where the dish is made with rice, meat and vegetables. For generations, locals have enjoyed the dish’s ancestor, arroz à la Valenciana – rice cooked the Valencian way.
The agricultural origin of paella’s staple ingredient, rice, gives the dish an exotic Asian soul. However, the grain was introduced to Spain in the 8th century by Moorish invaders from northern Africa. The Moors first began cultivating rice in Spain in the Albufera wetlands, to the south of the city of Valencia.
“Paella originated in the 19th century, although there are earlier versions of arroz à la Valenciana and arroz à la Morisca [rice cooked the Moorish way] that can be found in cookbooks dating back to the 16th century,” says Maria Paz Moreno, professor of Spanish language and culture at the University of Cincinnati in the US, and the author of many cookbooks featuring Spain’s gastronomic traditions.
