Say hola to Spanish food

Paella, tortilla and tapas are classic Spanish dishes that you can adapt to your taste.

MORE than 46 million people live in Spain. And among them, they have more than 46 million different recipes for paella.

Spain is not large by American standards; in area it totals the size of California plus South Carolina. Yet it comprises 16 distinct regions, each with its own way of cooking – and in some cases, its own language.

Murcia, in the south-east, is home to traditional Mediterranean food, heavy on the olive oil with plenty of grains, vegetables and fish. Navarre, in the north, is known for its dairy products and the culinary influence from neighbouring France. Andalusia, in the south, is where you find a lot of fried food, seafood and sherry.

The dish most closely associated with Spain, paella, originated in Valencia – known for its rice – something less than 200 years ago.

What Americans think of as paella would only draw a shrug, or maybe a laugh, in Spain. We want to see everything we can think of in paella: saffron-scented rice, of course, topped with shrimp, sausage, chicken, lobster, tomatoes, carrots, artichokes and olives, sort of like an everything pizza on rice.

Spanish paella has fewer ingredients, and they are not even necessarily the ones we think of. Traditional Valencian paella is made with rabbit and snails.

Which is why I made a seafood version.

The basic recipe – the one that calls for squid – is probably the most popular version in the entire country, because it comes from the most popular cookbook, 1080 Recipes, by Simone Ortega. This book, which first came out in 1972 and is still in print today, has sold millions of copies in Spain. Its influence is so far-reaching that it is considered the Spanish equivalent of Joy of Cooking.

I could not get the distinctive crust on the bottom of the rice that distinguishes a true paella, perhaps because I was not using an actual paella pan (the word “paella” refers to the pan, not the food). But I was more than happy with the result.

I next moved on to another popular dish forever associated with Spain, a Spanish omelette, also called a tortilla espanola. This is both remarkably satisfying and versatile; it can be served hot, cold or at room temperature, it can be served for breakfast, lunch, dinner or a late-night snack, and when cut into small pieces and stabbed with a toothpick it can be tapas.

All a Spanish omelette is is an omelette made with a large amount of thinly sliced potatoes; it is more like potatoes that are held together with egg. The potatoes have to be completely cooked before they are added to the egg mixture, so I did it the Spanish way, by heating them in a full cup of oil.

Actually, the original recipe by Ortega calls for 2¼ cups of oil. This may seem like a ridiculous amount of oil for a single omelette, even though it is large enough to serve six, which is why I reduced it to a mere cup.

Many Spanish recipes call for a great deal of oil, but little of it is actually consumed. It is just used for heating, like the oil we use to fry chicken, and is drained away and often strained for reuse before the food ever reaches the plate.

When you think of Spanish food, of course, you think of tapas. I made one tapa that seems to epitomise everything that is so appealing about those delicious little plates.

Mushrooms with garlic begins with ordinary white mushrooms, which are then transformed by olive oil

(this dish is a little oily, but the serving portion is small) and a lot of garoptional lic. An dash of crushed red pepper adds heat, with lemon juice providacidic ing an counterpoint.

In its own small way, it’s glorious. – St Louis Post-Dispatch/ Tribune News Service