InterPore2019: Eight minutes in Valencia – Part 4

Don’t forget: abstract submission for InterPore2019 is open and the deadline for submitting abstracts is 19 November

Welcome back to another preview of InterPore2019! In this article, we guarantee fun, learning, and cooking! Today, we would like to begin with one of most interesting experiences that you can have in Valencia: to cook and taste a typical Spanish dish. It is almost impossible to describe and list all the delicious meals that a tourist can have in Valencia. We have already described the Orxata and fartons, but the queen of all Valencian dishes is the paella! And today, before getting into a new topic of InterPore2019, we will learn how to cook paella!

Cooking paella is one of the experiences that you can have during InterPore2019. But, who can provide us with a traditional recipe of paella? Believe it or not, it is the Chair of the Local Organizing Committee of InterPore2019, Prof. Jaime Gómez-Hernández.

The paella, like many other famous dishes, is a potluck kind of a dish, which initially was made with whatever was on hand AND rice. The main particularity of this dish is the receptacle in which it has to be cooked – a very flat pan; the final dish should be a thin layer of rice with all the other ingredients. Cooking paella is almost like a religion, with a long list of do’s and don’ts and a court of keepers of the ORIGINAL recipe. Contrary to what most people expect, the Valencia paella is not a seafood concoction, but instead, it is made with a thick broth of chicken, rabbit, and vegetables (with optional snails for those who like them).

Click to download a PDF (466 KB) of the recipe: Valencian paella by Prof. Gómez-Hernández

If you get a paella pan during your stay in Valencia, you can try your hand following the recipe of InterPore2019 Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee. Here is our master chef in action while cooking a paella for 50 people. Excellent job, Jaime!

And after this delicious experience, we are ready to go back to the Conference Centre to learn more about the infinite possibilities offered at InterPore2019. The next topic for today is Awards! InterPore will honour scientists who have won recent InterPore awards and those who have made major contributions to InterPore activities during the past year at the Annual Meeting.

One of our favourite awards is the InterPore Award for Young Researchers. The International Society for Porous Media, InterPore, on behalf of PoreLab, a centre of excellence jointly formed by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University of Oslo, announces a Young Researcher Award in recognition of outstanding contributions in the field of porous media. The research may be theoretical, computational, or experimental. Award winners will be granted an allowance of 1500 Euro per month for up to three months of residence at PoreLab, either at the NTNU or the University of Oslo. PoreLab will cover the travel and housing expenses necessary for the stay. Nominees must be PhD students or Postdoc researchers who obtained the PhD degree no longer than three years before the award nomination deadline, and must be InterPore members. Do not forget the deadline: you can submit a nomination till 15 November 2018. More information about this and other awards can be found in the following article.

See you soon and get ready – we want to see you in Valencia!