preg_replace help

I could never understand how preg works.

I have a string like this: “<option value=“Arad”>Arad </option><option value=“Aciuta”>Aciuta </option><option value=“Adea”>Adea </option><option value=“Agrisu Mare”>Agrisu Mare </option>”

I want to clean all <option value=“zzz”> so that I end up just with the names between tags. How can I do this?

If you know a good and understandable tutorial about this, please post it.

Thanks!