Arroz con cosas
When someone makes a rather unorthodox or uninspired dry rice dish in the style of paella, Valencians disparagingly call it arroz con cosas: ‘rice with things’, ‘rice with some stuff’.
I think that, in contrast to this expression (and hopefully in contrast to its disparaging tone as well), my dry rice dishes could well be called rice without things (arroz sin cosas). For I do like the rice and the stock it has absorbed to take centre stage, with very few things, or none at all, on top, where the star ingredients would usually be found.
I have also been thinking about the similarity between the invisible stock in dry rice and the electric bass in music. The stock, like the bass, takes more time, has fewer notes, which must therefore be very precise; they are usually longer, more widely spaced notes, the brilliant details are subtler and harder to perceive, and all this results in less popular recognition than everything else gets (the things).
We could take the comparison even further and conclude that, in dry rice in the style of paella, spread in a very wide, very thin layer with few things on top (and socarrat below), the stock acquires an authority (while still remaining invisible) similar to that of the bass in disco-funk music.
Now, moving beyond the bass and the stock, the tremendous technical demands and precision required to make truly good dry rice remind me of the same technical demands and precision in a truly good disco-funk song. What is needed is a product (el producto!) that is at once very humble, yet of excellent quality, and yet capable of functioning generously (and humbly) as part of a complex system in which the leading role is shared.
And this, in turn, brings to mind the frequent criticisms levelled by some fans against the combinative, orchestral style of football known as ‘tiki-taka’. I can imagine these critics being equally dismissive of disco-funk music and dry rice with few things or no things at all, complaining that these musical and culinary styles ‘stifle’ the freedom and ‘imagination’ of the individual genius, and preferring to listen to those ubiquitous, ‘improvised’ solos (so quintessentially jazz) and live exclusively on very individual, visible things. They just wanna have things with things.