Private paella cooking lesson

You can photograph a cathedral. What you learned to cook, you take home with you.

You stand on a rooftop terrace in the middle of the old town with the Giralda directly in front of you, cook the paella from scratch, and eat it as the sun goes down behind the cathedral. The terrace takes ten people, no more — which is the point. You stand at the pan yourself, not behind a crowd.

Paella is not Andalusian, and a Spaniard will tell you so within the first minute. It comes from Valencia, where the rice grows in the wetlands around the Albufera, and the original has rabbit and snails in it rather than seafood. It became Spain's national dish anyway, and the technique is the same wherever you cook it — learn it here and you can cook it at home. It is also a good moment to hear why Sevillanos and Valencians still argue about what belongs in the pan.

The chef starts with what is in front of you: the rice, the saffron, and the sofrito of tomato, pepper and garlic that everything is built on. Then you cook. Paella is made open and without a lid, and the timing is everything — when the rice goes in, when you stop stirring, when it comes off the heat. Afterwards you sit down and eat it with a glass of wine or sangria. It takes as long as it takes; this is not run by the clock.

What you actually learn is not the recipe, which you could find online. It is how to handle the rice: bomba or senia, which absorbs liquid without collapsing; the stock measured against the pan rather than the rice; and above all not stirring once the rice is in, because that stillness is what makes the socarrat, the thin crisp layer at the bottom that Spaniards argue over. Those are the three mistakes people make at home, and all three get corrected on the spot.

If there are several of you, you share one large pan the way it is meant to be eaten — paella is not portioned food; it goes on the table and everyone eats from their own sector. And if you are travelling as a group, the whole terrace can be taken privately, with the chef and the view to yourselves. That is the version we arrange for wedding parties and company trips, and it should be booked well ahead.