Fiesta in la boca

Classic Spanish dishes make for an unforgettable feast

By GEORGINA GUSTIN
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

If you’re thinking of putting together a Spanish summer feast, you might want to master a few key words, and preferably say them with authority and flourish: gazpacho, paella, sangria and flan.

Make sure you roll the “r” in sangria and shorten the “a” in flan. Exclaim the words with Castillian flair.

Everything will taste better.

Of course, actually making the food is important, too, and paella, the rice-based, unofficial national dish of Spain, will require a little bit of practice (or luck) to get just right. In Spain, where paella (pronounced pie-AY-ya) is the traditional Sunday meal, cooks have argued for generations about the best route to achieving perfection. But don’t be intimidated — the results are amazing, even if you’re a beginner, and are about as beautiful and celebratory as food can be. You’ll even gain a few words in the process.

The dish is cooked in a low-rimmed, round pan called a paellera, made traditionally of thin carbon steel that conducts heat quickly. A mixture of onions, garlic and tomato, called sofrito, serves as the flavor base. When the rice is cooked, the heat gets cranked up under the pan, so the rice starts crackling and turning brown, forming a caramelized bottom crust. Achieving that crust — called socarrat, and considered by some Spaniards to be an aphrodisiac — is the ultimate goal of the paella cook.

Paella pans come as small as 10 inches to serve one to two people and as large as 52 inches, to serve up to 200.

Versions of paella are limitless, and paella cooks each have their own interpretations. But ultimately there is no single right way. You can throw just about anything in a paella that you think suits it.

The one essential element is a short or medium-grain rice that absorbs flavors better than long-grain varieties. The ultimate variety is Spanish Bomba rice, a short-grain rice that is said to soak up flavors more than other types, but any medium-grain rice can work well.

For a wide selection of paella pans and some recipes, go to www.paellapans.com. Another Web site, www.tienda.com, also has pans and a wide selection of Spanish specialties, including hams, cheeses, saffron, almonds, olives and Bomba rice.