VALENCIAN social media users are incensed once again after the latest offence of 'taking paella in vain' – a Twitter post showing a colander of boiled rice with a slice of processed meat on top has brought forth a volley of swearing online.
User 'Glifo' (@Interm1t3nt3) posted the unappetising picture with the caption, “Hey guys! Look at this Spanish paella I just made.”
One comment in reply said: “Not even my dog would eat this.”
Another made reference to an earlier paella-related 'blasphemy' – when Jamie Oliver's recipe for the typical eastern-region rice dish with spicy sausage was hammered on social media.
“Where is the chorizo?” asked Semper Nata (@mateo_84).
Others posted photographs of people with disgusted-looking faces, and another responded with a GIF of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and the caption, “At least the war has started, so I'll leave it there.”
Oliver, in his defence, claimed at the time – in October 2016 – that a 'Spanish grandmother had told him' to add chorizo.
His was not the only 'culinary blasphemy' to set social media steaming: a 'banoffee paella' hit the shelves of Dominique Ansel's eponymous London and New York restaurants two months later.
The inventor of the 'cronut', a cross between a doughnut and a croissant, largely escaped criticism from Valencians at first, and when it did strike, was somewhat watered down given that his unlikely creation was reported to be 'delicious'.
This week, though, paella hit the headlines for all the right reasons, as well as the wrong ones – it was the star Spanish recipe presented at the World Tapas Day festival in La Paz, Bolivia, where the country's Spanish ambassador Emilio Pérez de Ágreda said it was the Mediterranean nation's top dish.
