Arròs amb fesols i naps: Valencian rice recipe

Arròs amb fesols i naps, rice with beans and turnips (arroz con judías y nabos in Spanish), is a brothy pot rice with pork, beans, turnip and nabicol. Valencia Bonita describes it as a typical Valencian winter dish, and here you have the recipe with its quantities for four.

A pot rice, not a paella-pan rice

Arròs amb fesols i naps is made in a pot, cauldron or casserole, not in a paella pan. According to Valencia Bonita, today it is cooked mostly in an earthenware casserole, though it recommends a cast-iron pot, a perol (a wide cooking pot) or a metal casserole for the extra capacity. It is a long-cooked stew eaten with a spoon, with the rice added at the end. The glossary entry on creamy, soupy and dry rice explains where each one sits according to the broth.

The base recipe, from Valencia Bonita, gives neither the amount of water nor the time for the rice. For the rice time we turned to other recipes we could open, and we say where each figure comes from.

Pork and beans first

The order matters. First goes everything that takes time: the pork (rib, backbone and trotter, or a piece of belly), the soaked beans, the saffron and the pencas. It is cooked covered and, when it boils, the foam is skimmed off. Then, after 45 minutes to an hour of boiling and not before, the turnip and the nabicol go in.

Héctor Medina, in El Español, does it with different timings: two hours for the meat and beans over a low heat and 20 minutes more with the turnip, the napicol (as he writes it), the potato and the pencas. It is a recipe for eight diners, from his grandmother in Moncada.

How much rice and how much water

Here the sources do not agree, and it is best not to mix them. The base recipe asks for 400 to 500 g of rice for four and gives no water. Patricia Orduna, in El Español, uses 320 g for four with three litres of water and a pressure cooker; the rice, five minutes. Medina uses 400 g for eight with four litres, less than half the rice per diner of the base recipe. That is why the water on this page is left to your judgement: cover and adjust.

The rice goes in when everything else is cooked. Medina cooks it for 16 minutes: six over a high heat, five over a medium one and five over a low one, and stirs it so it releases starch and the broth ends up bound. If you would like another, simpler brothy rice, see the brothy rice with chicken and rabbit.

Turnip, nabicol, pencas and sofrito

The turnip and the nabicol are chopped. The pencas are mostly chard, though, according to the base recipe, they can come from another vegetable. The sofrito is made separately, with the onion and garlic very finely chopped and the tomato grated, and added to the stew. The onion black puddings and the blanquets are optional.

The name changes along the way. According to Valencia Bonita, in some districts it is called caldera, caldereta, olleta (although that usually has cracked wheat) or arròs junt. If the pork is swapped for beef, lamb or rabbit, or the beans for garrofó (a type of butter bean), warn people that it is already a similar recipe with another name.

Mistakes that cost you

The base recipe sums it up like this: the rice, “without overdoing it, just right”. Along the same lines, El Español’s headline on Medina sums up that the rice must not be left to stand. The other two mistakes are about patience: skipping the soak of the beans, which hydrate less well, and not skimming the foam at the first boil.

The vessel matters too. Valencia Bonita speaks of tall cauldrons, orange-wood fires and slow, gentle cooking; today any pot of good capacity will do, with the lid to hand.

How to serve it

It is served hot, with the broth still loose, in an earthenware casserole if you like. It is a winter dish and one for patron saint fiestas, from the Safor, the Ribera and l’Horta according to Valencia Bonita: the sources we have opened place it in Valencian lands, not in inland Alicante. If you like pot stews with turnip and pencas, look at the olleta de músic, from Alcoy, which has no rice. For another spoon rice with beans and greens, try the rice with Swiss chard and white beans.

If there are lots of you and you are cooking a big rice, in how much rice per person you will find how the quantities change for groups. And if there are 40 or more of you, we cook rice dishes for groups, live.