I had the good fortune to travel to southern Spain last year where I was introduced to an alternative to rice paella, fideos, or broken pasta. The fideos have a personality of their own taking on a nutty flavor, providing a full bodied backdrop for the seafood and tomatoes.
Ingredients:
- 7 ounces bag of fideos, or broken angel hair pasta
- 1 medium Spanish onion, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 pinch cayenne
- One 14-ounce can diced fire-roasted tomatoes
- 1 nutmeg seed, passed over a micro plane 5 times
- 2 1/2 cups seafood stock
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 1/2 cup water or vegetable broth
- 1 bay leaf
- 12 shrimp
- 3 squid tubes, cut in to rings
- 12 clams
- 12 mussels
- 1/16 teaspoon ground saffron or a medium sized pinch of threads
- 3/4 cup frozen peas
- 1 lemon
- 3 tablespoons parsley, chopped
Instructions:
- Coat a heavy pan in olive oil. Over medium/low heat, add fideos and sauté until they become a warm brown color, about 6 to 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove them from the pan and set aside.
- Reduce the heat add more olive oil to the pan, if needed. Add onion and sauté for 5 minutes, until almost translucent. Add garlic and sauté for another 3 minutes.
- Add in the smoked paprika, oregano, and cayenne, and sauté for another minute.
- Increase the heat to medium and add tomatoes, shave in nutmeg, and bring to a simmer for 3 minutes.
- Return the fideos to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, bring stock, wine, water and bay leaf to a boil in another pot, reduce to simmering, adding the seafood one species at a time and removing from the pan and reserving. Cook shrimp 2 to 3 minutes until just pink; squid 1 to 2 minutes until just prior to opaque; clams a maximum of 6 minutes, discarding unopened ones; mussels up to 4 minutes; discard unopened ones. Allow broth to return to a slow boil in between batches. Remove seafood and set aside.
- Add the saffron to broth and let ‘bloom’ for 2 minutes. Turn the heat off of the broth.
- Slowly add stock into the pot with the fideos, in 3 to 4 batches (like risotto). Let simmer with broth for about 20 minutes. When the pasta has reached desired consistency, add in the peas and seafood. Let steam for 2 minutes, covered.
- Prior to serving squeeze the lemon over the top, and sprinkle with parsley.