We were lucky enough to check out an advance press dinner on Tuesday for Valanni‘s upcoming Forks & Corks/Paella & Wine dinner the other night, which we’ll be telling you a little bit more about closer to the event. But we feel we’d be remiss if we didn’t tip you off to a hot little nugget of knowledge we gleaned from Chef R. Evan Turney, who travelled to Spain last year in search of the best paella recipes he could find. Two words: Bomba rice. Don’t make paella without it. Why? Bomba rice absorbs three times its volume in broth, which will advance the flavor and consistency to a degree where, well, once you’ve had bomba, you’ll never go back. And we are not going back. A cursory look at local grocery shelves, however, proves that bomba rice is not exactly an easy find in these parts. (Even Whole Foods came up dry.) So if you wanna do it right, Paella Grasshopper, you’re going to have to go online. Strangely, Amazon.com is the most direct, easy stop we found. So check it out. You might wanna hook up one of those real-deal paella pans while you’re at it.