I wrote once before about paella, a while back, but I have to do it once more, mostly because paella in Mallorca, just as it is vastly different from the version my mother makes at home, is also vastly different from the ones found in Barcelona.
When Alex and I were in Barcelona, I let him know about my personal obsession with sticking with native food. Whenever I travel, I feel the need to always eat that which the region is known for: never mind that I may be in the mood for simple spaghetti with tomato sauce (a craving that hits more often than I’d care to admit), in Interlaken, I’m eating rosti, in Rome I’m sampling the cacio e pepe or amatriciana, and in Barcelona, I’m most definitely going for tapas or paella, which is how I managed to eat tapas at least five times during my stay in the city, and paella twice.
The first thing I noticed about this paella marinara that Alex and I ordered to share (and failed miserably at finishing) was the abundance of both tomato-based sauce and whole pieces of seafood. I had always thought of paella as a rice dish, but this pile of mussels, squid and prawns most definitely considered rice the afterthought. While this particular version was a bit too heavily salted for my liking, both of the two versions I tried in Barcelona were a far throw from the tinted yellow rice I knew. I loved it.
My main problem with paella had always been its tendency to become dry: I love the crispy, crunchy bottom layer of rice that clings to the paella pan (which this dish did not lack at all), but I always find myself sprinkling Tabasco over the rice of a “typical” (as I knew it) paella, not only to pump up the spice, but to keep the starchy grains from growing too dry. The abundance of sauce along with the massive shellfish reminded me more of similarly spirited Italian pasta dishes, where the carb becomes secondary to the fish and sauce. It’s a different method and attitude towards paella, but I embraced it thoroughly.