Ask our cooks what makes a good paella and most will skip the rice, the pan and the fire, and talk about stock. The rice drinks roughly three times its volume of liquid, and it tastes of whatever that liquid tasted of. So the first hours of every day go into pots nobody in the dining room will ever see.
Three stocks, every day
- A fish stock from rockfish bones, heads and a sofrito, for the seafood rices and the fideuà.
- A chicken stock, roasted first, for the Valencian paella.
- A vegetable stock built on charred onion and tomato, for the rice that carries no meat or fish.
Each is strained, tasted and seasoned only lightly. Salt goes into the pan later, when the cook can judge the rice itself. A pot that tastes flat is started again rather than rescued.
The sofrito
Underneath every stock is a sofrito: onion, garlic, tomato and pepper, cooked slowly in olive oil until the tomato darkens and the oil turns red. It takes the better part of an hour and cannot be rushed; a sofrito cooked hot tastes raw and sharp. We make it in a large batch and keep the pot moving so nothing catches.
Rice forgives a lot. It never forgives a thin stock.
By the time the first guests sit down, the stocks are cooling, the sofrito is portioned and the fire outside is settling into embers. None of it shows on the plate as a separate thing. It is simply the reason the rice tastes like more than rice.