Paella Valenciana

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 35 minutes.

Ingredients

• 1 glass extra virgin olive oil
• 1 chicken, jointed
• 1 rabbit, jointed
• 300g fresh flat green beans (judía ferradura)
• 200g garrofó
• 1 grated medium tomato
• 1 tbsp sweet pimentón de Murcia
• a good pinch saffron
• 6 glasses water
• 3 glasses rice, bomba or senia
• 1 sprig rosemary
• to taste salt

Method

1. Sauté the chicken and rabbit in the oil over low heat for about five minutes.
2. Add the beans and garrofó, and fry to a homogeneous sofregit alongside the tomato.
3. Add the pimentón, fry it for no more than a minute over the lowest heat, then add the water immediately to stop it scorching.
4. Add the saffron and salt, bring to the boil and cook fifteen minutes.
5. Scatter the rice evenly across the pan and do not stir it again.
6. Boil a further fifteen minutes, adding the rosemary in the final seven or eight minutes and removing it after about five so it does not overpower the dish.
7. The paella is ready when the water has evaporated but the rice is not bone dry; for socarrat, leave it a little longer over low heat.

What a modern chef changes

Two-phase rice, a full sofregit, an isolated socarrat, and an overnight dry brine

Rungs 1 and 3

Method

1. Cook the rice eight minutes in the stock (Dacosta's two-phase technique, rung 1), then shock-chill the whole pan on ice to halt the cooking precisely.
2. Hold the chilled rice until the last few minutes before service, then finish it four more minutes to order.
3. Give the sofregit its full thirty minutes rather than the ten most home cooks give it (rung 3), building it in a separate pan and folding it in once properly caramelised so its reduction never competes with the rice's own timing.
4. For an isolated socarrat, use Dacosta's own ratio of 160g rice per litre of stock, working the oil in "a hilo," a thin steady stream, once the stock is absorbed, then twelve minutes over genuinely high heat at the final stage (rung 1 again, taken to its logical end).
5. Dry-brine the chicken and rabbit and rest them overnight before cooking, a change that follows the same slow, controlled-penetration logic already established for marinating meat on this coast, giving deeper seasoning without altering the dish's actual flavour profile.