I make no secret of being a paella nut. I could happily eat little else on my travels around Spain. In Valencia I was bewildered at the sheer choice of paella. The variety of the rice or noodle based dishes on offer. On day one i played safe with the traditional dish.
On day two i enjoyed Arroz Negro. Then, on the third day, i sampled Fideua for the first time. As virgin experiences go, it was memorable. Fideua actually originates from south of Valencia, in Gandia. The dish comprises noodles and fish stock. I’ve always liked Vermicelli and the use of it in this unique dish makes for the perfect combination. Saffron is prevalent in a good Fideua.
As is aioli and a stong fish stock. The noodles are cooked in a paella pan and, ideally, over an open fire. Clams, Mussels and Prawns are often the chief ingredients and are lightly cooked. The very business of cooking Fideau allows you to vary the ingredients to your own personal taste. As long as you get the fish stock reduced, and the noodles cooked correctly, what else you add to the pan will not detract from the taste.
I think this is a dish that, with a small element of trial and error, any of us can learn to cook just as well as many a Spanish chef. In my experience cooking Fideua is second nature to the chefs based in Valencian restaurants. Making your own Fideua is not difficult.
This recipe is one of the more typical found in Valencia. You can always make it richer and boozy by adding Oloroso cream to your Fideua.
Ingredients
Preparation
Rinse shrimp, mussels and clams under cold running water and set aside. Pour fish or shrimp stock into a medium saucepan for use later. The stock should be warm. Rinse fish and cut into 2” cubes. Clean the squid and trim tentacles. Slice squid into rings. Slice red pepper into thin strips. Cut each tomato into 8 pieces. Peel garlic cloves and place in a mortar and mash with the pestle. Place the paella pan on the BBQ grate and add enough olive oil to coat the bottom and allow the pan to heat up. When hot enough, sauté the shrimp and squid in the olive oil. Add olive oil as needed to prevent sticking. Once the shrimp has cooked, it will turn pink. Remove the shrimp and squid from the pan and set aside. Leave the oil in the pan. Put the diced tomatoes, slices of red pepper and mashed garlic in the olive oil with the two red pepper pods and sauté for two minutes. Add the fish stock and saffron threads to the pan and stir. Bring broth to a boil. When starts to boil, add the vermicelli and fish and stir. Spread the clams, mussels and squid around the pan and arrange the shrimp on top. Cook for 15 minutes, or until the pasta is “al dente.” Remove pan from the BBQ and leave it to settle for 5 minutes. Serve and savour.
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dear vernon.
my name is Soraya and i am from valencia. there is not a single restaurant in the province that can prpare a paella or fideua the way it should be done, the only place to sample a proper version is in the home of a native. both meals need time and love to prepare and have similar cooking techniques, i would prefer you not to place a recipe on the internet that is not the correct ingredients or cooking technique, the paella is been changed through the centuries because people think they know what it is, i am happy and proud that you love valencia so much i do too it is my home! but please understand that this kind of recipe give a bad name to us and our cooking which makes me sad.
Soraya Beltran
dear vernon
i want to give you a recipe for a nice fish stock and a little advice so that your fideua comes out beautifuly. firstly if you fideua looked like the one in the picture im sorry but it was not prepared by a chef or by anyone with knowledge, you should not see caldo it should be dry.
for a fish stock you should use moralla, in here in england moralla is a little hard to find, moralla is all the little fish that are caught from the bottom in the net of the fisherman, there is little crabs and flat fish all very small we would use a minimum of 2kilos moralla for 3 litres of water please dont use blue fish for a stock it is too strong.
so 3 litres of cold water 2 kilos of moralla or little fishes and crabs, 1peeled onion cut in half, 1 red pepper cut in half, 1 tomato cut in half, 3 pinch of salt.
bring to boil not too quickly and boil for 20 minutes. now taste the stock and add salt little by little until you have it tasting very nice, you can use a lot of salt sometimes but dont be scared the taste is important use the salt you need not what you think is right.
fry the squid first and when it is nearly done add the whole prawns when they are nearly done add one chopped red pepper, when this is cooked add chopped tinned tomato and garlic slices, when this is cooked add the fideos when the fideos are sucking all the flavour and puffing add the stock and the saffron or colouring add your fish cubes if you are using them and the uncooked clams and mussels, leave alone now until the stock has gone completely if the stock has gone but fideos are not cooked add a little bit more stock
serve this with allioli and bread
Soraya
Dear Soraya
Thank you for your two messages.
Received and understood.
I will adapt the blog entry to include your comments and, if possibl, your own recipe. Do you have a photograph of what you
would class as a good Fideua so that i can put that picture on the website?
While tastes and opinions on food vary all over Spain (as you will know), my only concern in accuracy when it comes to
the ingredients and preperation of the dish so i will use your comments and recipe.
Let me know about a photo.
Thank you.
Vernon
dear vernon
thank you for you reply. i feel very strongly on this subject and i believe that before a person can change a recipe or adapt to personal taste that it is fair to have a proper recipe to start. i have seen you website because my sister will have a page soon on it she has the el bon plat business and she has told me how much english people like the food from spain but have some wrong ideas about some recipes, your blog is a very good idea and i hope everyone continues to enjoy spanish food especially from valencia!
i can send you photos from the next time we make fideua, and if you would like a recipe that we use at home i will send it aswell so you can try for yourself in granada.
“fins ara”
soraya
I don’t agree with you at all Soraya – there is no such thing as a ‘correct’ recipe. Cooking is like language, it evolves and develops as the years pass and traditional recipes take on modern twists as they are passed from generation to generation, region to region and country to country. To suggest that any recipe, whether ‘incorrect’ or not, could possible give anyone or any region a ‘bad name’ is a very negative view. Instead of making you ‘sad’, perhaps it should make you happy that we have opened the debate on this fantastic dish. We welcome yours and everyone’s comments, corrections, suggestions and improvements. We were not suggesting that our recipe was definitive – it is merely a starting point. To be honest, I find your attitude overly harsh and I don’t think many people would agree with your assertions that “there is not a single restaurant in the province that can prpare a paella or fideua the way it should be done” and that you “would prefer you not to place a recipe on the internet that is not the correct ingredients or cooking technique”. Oh well, that’s what this is all about – debate and a bit of fun…and great food!
I enjoy the different points of the debate here. I incline more towards Jonathan’s point of view, that recipes do not belong to any region or people, but are for the world at large (even if we will always associate certain dishes with certain places). In that sense, we might suggest improvements, or recommend what we think is authentic (i.e. most traditional) but I don’t see how any recipe can be “wrong”. Probably the Neopolitans think putting pineapple on pizza is a travesty, but lots of people like it.
I live in the north of Spain, and in general, although the quality of the cooking is fantastic, restaurants don’t do a good paella. I feel inspired by this blog to visit Valencia and put some restaurants to the test for myself!
I am from Barcelona, with a Valencian great-grandmother, our family recipe for paella comes from her. I know that it does not confirm to some Valencian standards – we mix fish & meat, hersey to many. What I do know, was that when Alfonso XIII visited Barceloan before the civil war, my great-grandmother cooked the paella for the then king, as her paella was renowned. This very same paella is now cooked by my mother, myself & my two brothers, and you can already see small changes – the most recent “horiffic” episode was when my elder brother introduced chorizo! I am with Jonathan, there is no standard, and sorry Soraya, but who is to say what the pedigree of any recipe is, particularly when cooked by the people in hundreds of households. Keep cooking, exploring & learning. PS our family fideua has no tomato, pepper, or fish, so these recipes look odd to me – but having cooked both recipes are very, very good.
Soraya I can feel your pain. I’m Thai and seeing people altered “Pad Thai” recipe all over the world myself. I believe that food is worldly and for sharing but a certain recipe has its own history and to alter it base on the chef immagination is acceptable as long as it’s respect the origin. The word “traditional” isn’t for anyone to alter. They can do fusion paella or neo paella but it’s not fair to call it a traditional Valencia paella when it’s really not. So, I disgree with Jonathan and David. Yes, there is a right and wrong recipe because if it’s not then in the future paella might have Thai shrimp paste or curry paste, worst yet fish sauce, chicken feet, pig’s liver or calf’s brain, in them! Up to that point the true Valencian migth not want to see the name attached to the dish.
I agree with Soraya about trying the true “traditional” recipe once and after that you can go do whatever you want because at the end, you will be the person who eats it but don’t make the Valencian responsible for the dish you made, right. I made this argument because I just put myself in her shoes and thinking about the Pad Thai dish that has been grossly altered all over the world. I wouldn’t mind it at all if they don’t call it Pad “Thai” and call it “stir fried noodle inspired by Pad Thai” (Please, read my Pad Thai recipe on my blog http://highheelgourmet.com if you are interested and let me know if it is fair to let people all over the world alter the recipe to their liking and still call it Pad Thai.)
I don’t think Vernon ever claimed that his was the original, correct recipe. The point about Soraya’s comment was that she said “i would prefer you not to place a recipe on the internet that is not the correct ingredients or cooking technique”. That’s what I can’t agree with.
Thanks to Vernon for putting this recipe up and open minded for Soraya’s comment. I’m going to follow both recipes and making the fideua paella now.
I have lived in the Valencia region for a number of years now, high in the mountains where a number of the inhabitants are “interlopers” from other parts of Spain, and nothing is guaranteed to provoke arguments and ill feeling as quickly as somebody saying “This is the right recipe for …….”
If you have lunch at any of the seven houses along our small track you will have seven similar, but very different variations on the same recipe, all of which are ‘authentic’.