Arròs al Forn: Valencian Baked Rice

Some friends who have tried the baked rice my wife's mother makes (she doesn't like me calling her my mother-in-law) have asked me for the recipe, because it's truly great. I'm putting it here so we all have it to hand.

The most surprising thing is that as well as being very good, it's very simple. It doesn't have the complexity of, for example, paella; the rice almost always comes out just right, in fact always if you follow the recipe to the letter.

Years ago, when baked rice was prepared in the villages of Valencia, the clay dish with the rice and its ingredients was taken to the village oven. My wife's mother tells me that to avoid carrying unnecessary weight, the water was added once at the oven, when the clay dish with all the ingredients was already on the baker's peel; at that moment it was stirred and in it went.

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 4 coffee cups of rice
• 8 cups of water
• 4 whole garlic cloves
• 1 whole tomato
• 4 tablespoons crushed tomato
• 1 large potato or two small ones
• 1 small jar of chickpeas
• some pork ribs
• 2 botifarres de ceba (onion blood sausages)
• A little parsley
• Sweet paprika
• Food colouring

Method

In a frying pan, fry the potatoes cut into thin slices.

Take the potatoes out of the pan and in the same oil fry the meat, and also the sausages a little, then add one of the garlic cloves very finely chopped and the crushed tomato.

Leave it for a few minutes, and at the last moment add the sweet paprika.

In a clay dish (or another ovenproof one), add the rice, the chickpeas, the colouring, the fried potatoes, the crushed tomato with the meat and the sausages we cooked separately, the raw tomato cut into thin slices, and the garlic cloves with their skins. In other words, everything.

Finally, add the water and salt, stir, and straight into the oven (at home or in the village).

If we add the water boiling, we save a little time, as the process will go a bit faster.

The oven should be at about 180 degrees, for about 20 or 25 minutes. We'll know it's done when the rice has absorbed all the water and the top is dry.

It's an easy rice to make because the rice turns out just right if we follow the rule of one cup of rice to twice as much water.

The aromas of the garlic, the meat and the sausage blend together in the oven, giving rise to a new and very particular aroma that gives baked rice a lot of personality.

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