To win Alton Brown’s Cutthroat Kitchen on the Food Network last year, chef Dakota Soifer of Boulder’s Cafe Aion had to run a maze of red velvet ropes and make a red velvet cake using beets for color.

Like many notable culinary creations, paella stemmed from a basic desire — hunger. “Valencian farmers would use whatever was left over from a hard day of labor and cook it over a pan with rice,” chef ...