[Narrator] Making a perfect paella is not as easy as it looks.
It all starts with the rice, as you'll hear from Basque food authority,
Maria Jose Sevilla and Catalan chef Daniel Olivella,
who makes impeccable paella at his San Francisco restaurant B44.
[Maria Jose Sevilla] Rice. Rice in Spain is so very different
than rice in Italy or rice in America.
And for the majority of the.....
This is the way we prepare. We need our own rice.
It has completely different characteristics.
[Daniel Olivella speaking] It's got to be a round grain rice similar to Arborio....
Not the thin rice because it's going to cook too quick.
And what you want is to create a little bit of the gelatin.
Paella cannot be moved (opposite to risottos).
Once you make it, you can shake it, but you cannot stir it up.
For me, these key ingredients, one of them — it's the Sofrito,
which is a very slow-cooked tomato type of paste,
with onions and garlic sometimes,
but most most of the times,
onions, tomato, and that's it. And that's the Sofrito.
That adds depth to the paella.
This is a key ingredient.
For some people, it might not be important.
I like some of the paella to have saffron.
But in Spain, it depends on the region — where you are.
They use or they don't use saffron.
But that's a very important key.
Another key thing that I like to do with some of the paellas,
it's to finish them with a Picada, which is a....
Picada in Catalan, it's "Picard," means "to pound,"
so pretty much what you do in a mortar,
you put the ingredients that you want to finish the paella with,
and you just pound them together
to a paste consistency.
And don't forget always when you talk about paella, you use a real paella.
Otherwise the rice is not going to come out the way you want it.
Paella meaning — the cooking utensil you make it with.
[Narrator] In many ways, Spain's home cooking and its modern cooking are closer than we think,
says Jose Andreas, chef/owner of seven restaurants in the Washington DC area,
and a protégé of Ferran Adria.
[Jose Andreas] Spain is in a moment of truth because
home cooking, traditional cooking, modern creative cooking....
They're all in a very vital moment, no?
Home cooking though, we're going to see that through the history, in the future,
to a degree is
gonna end disappearing....
It's going to end disappearing only because everything, everyday is more and more mixed.
So, I would like to know — hundred, two, three hundred years from now — what "traditional cooking" means....
And what "home-cooking" means....
But probably is going to be very different from what it means today.
Remember that traditional cooking of today
was the modern cooking of yesterday.
And modern cooking of today, somehow, will be traditional cooking of tomorrow.
Traditional cooking and modern cooking, they're very far away,
but at the same time, they are so close.
Um....
Today we have people like Ferran Adria, or Juan María Arzak,
who are just
doing the modern cooking and the creative cooking and
everything seems is happening in Spain,
and so many amazing chefs doing things at the same modern level.
But at same time, everything has been happening
with the Ferran Adria [...] company.
All the three and two-star Michelin restaurants
are igniting a new revolution at other levels.
For example, today you find championships about tortilla española,
the amazing omelette and potatoes.
And where people are asking themselves,
"what's the perfect tortilla española?"
This wouldn't be happening 20 years ago.
Today, we're asking ourselves,
"what will be the perfect tortilla española?" Home cooking at its best.
Today's restaurants — they are really finding what grilling means.
Is [...] bitter and very close to Bilbao,
in a restaurant [....],
who is redefining what barbecue and grilling is.
He makes his own charcoal. Every morning six o'clock,
he puts logs of olive tree, orange tree, oak,
and he makes his own charcoal,
and he has new techniques to grill fish, meat or even baby eels.
Coming up with new utensils, you see?
At the end — is not "good" traditional and "bad" modern.
At the end, as Mario [...] says, "it's only good cooking."