Sunday paella in Valencia: A1 Spanish reading
A1 Spanish reading about Valencian paella, saffron and socarrat, built on me, te, le, nos, os and les gusta.
Los domingos nos gusta cocinar paella
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A family in Valencia cooks paella on Sunday: where the rice grows, why there is no chorizo, what saffron does and what socarrat is.
La paella es un plato de arroz, pero la palabra «paella» también es el nombre de la sartén. Es una sartén redonda, ancha y baja, con dos asas. El arroz crece muy cerca de la ciudad, en la Albufera, un lago con muchos campos de arroz alrededor.
En la paella valenciana hay pollo, conejo, judías verdes, tomate y aceite de oliva. No hay chorizo. A mi abuela no le gusta el chorizo en el arroz, y muchas personas en Valencia piensan igual.
El azafrán da un color amarillo al arroz. Es una especia muy cara: viene de una flor pequeña y los agricultores recogen las flores a mano. A mí me interesa mucho el azafrán, porque los hilos son rojos y el arroz es amarillo.
Al final, el arroz del fondo de la sartén tiene un color oscuro. Ese arroz tostado tiene un nombre especial: el socarrat. Mi abuela siempre pregunta: «¿Os gusta el socarrat?». En mi casa la respuesta es sí.
En Valencia la paella normalmente es la comida del mediodía, no una cena. Muchas familias comen directamente de la sartén, con una cuchara de madera. A mis primos les encanta comer así, todos alrededor de la mesa.
¿Y tú? ¿Te gusta cocinar los domingos? ¿Qué plato preparas con tu familia? ¿Hay arroz en la comida de tu país?
About this article
What you'll learn
Gustar, encantar and interesar with me, te, le, nos, os and les; Spanish kitchen vocabulary.
A family in Valencia cooks paella on Sunday: where the rice grows, why there is no chorizo, what saffron does and what socarrat is.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
todos juntos
newall together
Juntos agrees with the group: juntos when at least one man is in it, juntas when the group is all women.
Everyday way to say that people do something as a group.
a mano
newby hand
A fixed phrase with no article: a mano. Spanish uses a + noun to say how something is done.
Turns up with recoger, lavar, escribir and hacer.
piensan igual
newthey think the same way
Igual here is an adverb meaning "in the same way", not the adjective "equal". Pensar changes e to ie: pienso, piensas, piensan, but pensamos keeps the e.
A short way to agree with someone without repeating the whole idea.
la comida del mediodía
newthe midday meal
In Spain la comida is the main meal of the day, eaten in the early afternoon; the evening meal is la cena.
Comida means both "food" and "lunch", so the context decides.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
The pan (la sartén)
sartén
frying pan
Sartén is feminine although it ends in a consonant: la sartén, las sartenes. The paella pan is wide and shallow with two handles.
A basic kitchen word, and here it is also where the dish gets its name.
Rabbit
conejo
rabbit
Here conejo is the meat, not a pet. It sits in the list next to pollo, which is chicken.
One of the two meats in a traditional Valencian paella.
Green beans
judías verdes
green beans
Judías is feminine plural. Verde has no separate feminine form but does take the plural -s: judías verdes.
Other regions call them habichuelas or ejotes.
Saffron
azafrán
saffron
Azafrán is masculine and stressed on the last syllable, so it carries a written accent. The word reached Spanish from Arabic.
The spice that colours the rice, and one of the most expensive in the world.
The bottom
fondo
bottom
Fondo is the lowest or furthest part of something. El fondo de la sartén is the bottom of the pan. The same word also means a fund, as in fondo de inversión, so let the context decide.
Useful in the kitchen and for directions too: al fondo de la calle.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
nos gusta + infinitive
nos gusta cocinar
we like cooking
The person who likes is in the pronoun (nos means "to us") and the verb agrees with what is liked. Here that is the infinitive cocinar, so gusta stays singular. English flips the order: we like cooking.
With an infinitive gusta never becomes plural, even with two actions: nos gusta cocinar y comer.
The real subject is el chorizo
no le gusta el chorizo
my grandmother does not like chorizo
El chorizo is the grammatical subject: it is the thing that pleases. The grandmother appears twice, as the pronoun le and as a mi abuela, which says who le refers to. No goes in front of le, never between le and gusta.
If the liked thing were plural the verb would change: no le gustan los chorizos.
les encanta: stronger than gusta
les encanta
they love eating like that
Encantar follows the same pattern as gustar: les points to them, and the verb agrees with comer, so it stays singular. Encantar already carries the idea of "a lot", so Spanish does not add mucho to it.
Interesar, which also appears in this text as me interesa, behaves the same way.
os gusta: asking a group
¿Os gusta el socarrat?
do you all like the socarrat?
Os means "to you" when you speak informally to more than one person, and it is used in Spain. Latin America says les gusta instead. The subject is still el socarrat, so the verb is gusta.
This is the form you hear around a Spanish family table.
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