Fideua de calamares

A fideua, it’s when you are Catalan, you want to do a paella and you have no rice… So you make it with :

PASTA !!!! Yeah, this blog was starting to suffer from a lack of pasta or noodle recipes.

Fideos are kinds of short spaghetti… and if possible thick short spaghetti. These are “gratin spaghetti”, I use what I find here.

The fideua can be a huge outdoor dish for a big party, this one is a small everyday version.
I followed this recipe of fideua de calamares . Nearly followed.

Calamari are washed in salted water, emptied, cut… Then stir-fried without oil. Then given a drink (red wine).

Meanwhile onion, garlic, chili pepper are simmered in olive oil. When they turn gold, the wine is added and also Spanish “paella yellowing mix”. It’s not safran, too expensive. I make mine with : 1 ts of turmeric, 1/2 ts paprika plus 4 sprigs of safran in 2 tbs of water. You can mix it directly, or add the safran + water 5 minutes before ending the cooking (it’s better).

Add in the fideos pasta (75 g here), the calamari, 1 cup of green beans, and 1 cup of water. Let that simmer till water evaporated + pasta is cooked + calamari is soft. Perfect sinchronization, that was like that after 30 minutes :

At that point, I added nuoc nam (to salt it and accent seafoof flavor) and a sliced hot green pepper (as I like hot food). With only the red chili (uncut), it’s not a spicy dish.
It’s voluminous and very filling, but not very caloric.

1 plate (1/2 fideua wok) :
Cal 333.0 F6.7g C40.4g P22.4g