making paella

For me, the highlight of Fallas was easily the Paella competition on my street: chatting up old ladies for recipe tips and techniques, sipping cold beers, inhaling the smoke from the orange and pine wood fires...it was awesome.

What the hell is Fallas? Fallas is a festival that coincides with the Christian celebration of San Jose (March 19). It´s really the pagan side of a very Catholic, traditional, staid holiday - what´s leftover of the rituals of spring renewal at the solstice. During Fallas, sculpted figures are erected throughout the city representing or alluding to various public, uh, figures or recent events/controversies. On the 19th, the last day of Fallas, all the figures are burnt to the ground, save one (the winner of the best Falla competition). The burning of effigies to mark the spring solstice clearly recalls the festival´s pagan roots and adds to the almost carnivalesque feel of the celebration, however, it does have a more recent Christian, and even cuotidian, origin. But, as the sun sets and after all the good little Christian families parade down the street during the day, the craziness begins (at night, duh) and all hell breaks loose.

Today´s Fallas evolved out of what had been a long and very practical tradition in Valencia: Carpenters, on the eve of the day of their patron San Jose (Joseph - he was a carpenter, remember?), would place a wooden figure covered in painted-on paper strips, on the street in front of their workshops. This rite was initiated by the carpenters´ guild as a way of cleaning out their workshops before spring and getting rid of old shavings and pieces of wood, which they later burned in a purifying bonfire. What used to be a utilitarian and even reverential custom changed at some point in the 18th century, when some of the carpenters began creating more elaborate and satiric figures, exposing and shaming real people to the public. Today, the figures include monuments up to 4 or 5 stories high.

¨Fallas¨ also refers to the neighbourhood group and the activities surrounding the actual figures. During Fallas, each neighbourhood group, or ¨Falla¨, organizes activities and events for their members, including this wicked cook-up (the Paella competition). They hire an artisan to construct the falla (and raise money throughout the year in order to pay him sometimes as much as .5 million€), hold parties every night on the street, march around the neighbourhood in traditional folk dress or aristocratic outfits (these people are called Falleros/as), banging drums and playing the same song over and over. There are more than 300 Fallas in Valencia and each one of them hosts its own local celebration as well as participating in the city-wide events (like the Ofrenda, or Offering: each falla marches to the Plaza de la Virgen bringing flowers, which they offer to a giant wooden statue...of the virgin, the flowers are placed on the bare wooden skeleton, forming the virgin´s dress, or, we might say, clothing the virgin), and of course, on the night of the 19th, each group BURNS their Falla. It´s an environmental disaster. The Polytecnic university is actually conducting an environmental study on this, because all the figures are made of polystyrene...

Anyway, I took some photos of what I think was the best part of all this. More than the nights spent shoving through hoardes of people and knocking old people into the gutters, guzzling rum and dancing to Shakira, I enjoyed wandering around the city looking at the monuments, buying buñuelos (deep-fried pumpkin donuts), oggling falleras, and: Paella. On my street there was a 25 paella cook-off. I settled in with a few beers to enjoy the spectacle:
This women in particular seemed to know her stuff, so I stuck by her, watching and learning: First, she fries chicken and rabbit in olive oil, adding chopped tomatoes after about 10mins. When the meat is browned, she adds artichokes and green beans, which she then fries for another 5mins or so before adding the water. The water should go up to the rivets, a little higher than you see in this picture because she tossed some more water in a second later.
When the water reaches the boil add the rice, roughly 100g per person. Stir initially, then let sit. That´s basically it. Except for spices: rosemary, paprika, safran, salt, pepper. Add during the add water stage. It´s really a lot harder than it sounds, especially if you´re cooking over a wood fire, but you can make a pretty good go at it at home on the stove or on the barbecue. I found this whole process fascinating.