The Paella Pilgrimage

Paella was born in the fields and marshes around Valencia, and the classic paella valenciana is a farmer's dish, not a seafood platter: rabbit, chicken, sometimes snails, with garrofó and ferraura (local beans), tomato, saffron and short-grain rice, cooked wide and shallow over an open wood fire so the rice stays thin and the bottom caramelises into socarrat - the crisp, toasty crust that's the whole prize. Eaten straight from the pan, at lunch, ideally outdoors.

The rest of the world's "paella" - seafood, chorizo, a deep gloopy mound - would horrify a Valencian. Here you get the real thing, cooked properly, in the one place that can rightly claim it. It's a genuine pilgrimage dish: tied to a specific land, a specific method, and a fierce local pride. Fly in, find the socarrat, and you'll never order paella the same way again.