Hugo Brown

It’s well documented how excited, or horrified, food enthusiasts are by the Salt Baes of this world ­– gold coated Japanese steaks certainly look good on social media. But a nice potato? Some bright, green leaves? The frilliest mushrooms or a plump bulb of fennel? We don’t often hear praise for the more humbler kitchen ingredients, especially the ones grown on British shores. Things are changing, but for many raw produce still doesn’t quite cut the mustard. You only need to look at the amount of salmon consumed in the UK to realise we don’t always care about where our food comes from. Perhaps it’s that we take for granted the availability of everything all the time.

The UK has something of a reputation for butchering those classic European dishes on which entire cultures seem to be founded. Think spaghetti carbonara creamy enough to make an Italian weep or the kind of rubbery, watery beef bourguignon that is the culinary equivalent of our grizzly, grey weather to any self-respecting Frenchman or woman. But perhaps no dish is more maligned or widely miscooked than Paella. Certainly, we’re not helped in this respect by our celebrity chefs. And the usual suspects are at it again – Jamie Oliver reportedly received death threats for adding chorizo to his version and Gordon Ramsay followed suit, eliciting a similar reaction.