Fideuà #2: Squid, Ham, Spaghettini

For a more traditional Fideuà than before, we broke up spaghettini. Using liquid from cooking octopus gave it a fantastic depth and richness. This improvised dinner was short on measurement but long on taste.

The finished dish

I used 225 g / 8 ounces spaghettini we had on hand. To break it into short pieces, I put them into a large ziptop bag, rested this on a towel, and whacked it about every 5 cm / 2 inch with the back of a cleaver. This worked pretty well: good breakage and no pasta sprayed across the kitchen.

Spaghettini, mostly broken into short pieces

We like the Catalan habit of combining shellfish and pork, so I used squid tentacles and some ham cut into fork-friendly pieces. The protein probably added up to 225 g / 8 ounces.

Mis en place by the side of the BBQ

I knew I wanted to toast the spaghettini but figured it would be finicky to remove from our paella pan later, so I started sautéing everything else first. Olive oil is traditional but I had some lovely bacon fat lying around that would amp the ham flavor. In a paella pan on the barbecue, I first sautéed a diced onion, several shaved cloves of garlic, and some diced small tomatoes from the garden. I then added the ham and squid. My fire wasn't as hot as I expected, so rather than browning well, the veggies and squid released a fair amount of liquid: this turned out to be a good thing. I pulled out the solids and poured the flavorful liquid into separate bowls.

Next, I added some more bacon fat and my broken spaghettini. I stirred this around until it started browning a bit, and getting a little aromatic. I used this opportunity to further break the now-fragile strands into smaller pieces with my stirring spatula.

Pan roasting the noodles in bacon fat

I then added the reserved liquid and maybe a cup of juice we'd saved when we cooked octopus sous vide; it was enriched with some roasted red pepper liquid from the previous cooking and had a great aroma.  This cooked a while until the spaghettini started becoming pliable, at which time I added back the meat and veggies, and topped with a gremolata of minced orange peel and parsley. It smelled divine.  When the spaghettini was al dente, I added a sprig of rosemary, covered with foil, and let it rest enough for the pasta to finish cooking.

For service, we portioned it out and topped with a fiercely garlicky toum (my new favorite condiment) and a squirt of lemon juice. It was pretty excellent.

Served with toum and lemon juice

There were some strands of spaghettini that didn get completely cooked; I expect that they were so long that they never got immersed in the broth.  I recall the fideuàs I've had around Barcelona had a slight crunch to the noodles, perhaps they finish over a very hot flame to develop a crust, a socarrat; maybe they finish under a broiler to crisp the top. We'll work on these next time.