Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Tyler Florence's Eat This Book. To read more about Tyler Florence and to get his tips on throwing a Super Bowl party, click here.
There's a restaurant in Barcelona off la Ramblas — the "walking district" — called Las Turcoles, which means charcoal. You walk down an unassuming cobblestone street and into an even more unassuming bar. To get to the restaurant you walk through the kitchen where there are fifteen Spaniards standing around a train-engine of a coal-fed stove. The place looks and smells like Spain at its finest: paprika, chorizo, hams, and garlic.
I knew I was in the right place when I got to the bottom of my dish. The rice was toasted and crunchy, like a perfect paella should be. Using a method called socarrat, the chefs crank up the heat under the rice really high once it's cooked through, until they smell the rice begin to toast, and then shut it off. It was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted.
