Every year summer arrives around this time and I get caught by the bull: I still haven't landscaped the terrace, I haven't changed my wardrobe –and at this point, why do it– and I'm not remarrying either, which prevents me from putting together the month of vacation and the Francoist wedding permit, and thus fulfill the dream of climbing Everest on its paved face.
Fortunately, the restoration is far-sighted and adapts to summer, so we can now enjoy the watermelon gazpachos, the symphonic salads and the pineapple pizzas. In summer, people eat less and people lower the demand, hence the danger of the menus, especially if they are shared with women who are up to date and are in favor of innovating.
Unchanged, paella is a transversal, intergenerational and consensus dish and every summer I dedicate myself, unsuccessfully, to trying to eat a memorable paella without having to travel by train to Valencia, although the experts console you by saying that the worst paellas in the world They eat in Valencia.
The fact is that summer arrives and one clings to the paella and forgets its pieces of leathery cuttlefish, those peas designed for a pellet shotgun and some indigestible strips of pepper that emblazon the dish in the face of its majestic presentation at the table.
Is paella a source of national pride or a symbol of our ills? Thanks to the fact that rice supports everything, there are so many varieties of paella, a dish that reflects an individualistic character, chaotic and prone to complaining (if the point of the grain, if the fire, if the beans). Many rice dishes seem to have arisen from a conjugal brawl in which the contenders have preferred to throw everything they had at hand into the paella pan rather than into the consort's neck.
At the same time, paella has an outburst, a cohesive spirit – even I share it! – and that Mediterranean virtue of harmonizing contradictory things, a virtue that our administrations are fighting today, which have become fond of dictating rules, ordinances and regulations so that we are Swedish and non-Mediterranean. And what would a Swedish cook do alone with the ingredients of a paella?
Cut your minga!
