Bacalao a la Llauna: easy and delicious salt cod

I love this dish at restaurants and assumed it would be difficult to make at home -- wrong! It's quick and easy, and doesn't require exotic ingredients. Except, that is, for the bacalao (salt cod), more below. You only need a few pantry staples, and it comes together in under 30 minutes. The paprika-infused oil on the top of the slightly crusty fish provides an intriguing,, almost smoky complement.

125 g each Bacalao, white beans, seared leeks

I didn't realize until I started looking for recipes that this dish is a Catalan speciality -- I assumed it was available all over Spain. "La Llauna" is the flat metal tray used for baking, here for bacalao, but we've also had snails cooked and served in them: they're cheap and versatile.

In Barcelona, the markets have specialists like Perelló who sell this dehydrated or already soaked and hydrated for you, and I now get their hydrated version to save time; I would not use frozen cod because the amount of water loss during thawing results in a tough piece of fish . Get a boneless cut. It's worth paying more for the thick cuts like loin, rather than thinner filets: it provides better texture and cooks more evenly. As I've written elsewhere, if you get the dehydrated version, rinse it well to remove excess salt, then hydrate over about 3 days, changing the water a couple times a day -- don't go too far or it will be a bit dull, you want a bit of salt, texture, and funk that you won't find in fresh cod.

Basically, you sauté the Bacalao and finish in the oven, topped with a simple sauce of oil, garlic, pimenton, and wine. You can skip my recipe and head straight to Spain On A Fork: he does a great job combining it with traditional white beans in the final baking; he even has a video. Spain in a Pan is very similar, and suggests you can use fresh cod. Cod vendor Bacalao.com mentions that traditionally the flour isn't used but is optional; I think it improves the surface texture. Spanish blog El Forner de Alella is similar to the others (with a helpful video), if you don't trust the English ones. I like the White Beans with this, but you can omit them if you don't like or don't have them. 

This serves 2. Measurements don't need to be exact.

 10 ml    1 Tbs   Extra Virgin Olive Oil (for filming the tray)

300 g    10 oz    Bacalao loins 3-4cm thick, hydrated

 40 ml    2 Tbs   Extra Virgin Olive Oil (for sautéing the Bacalao)

200 g     7 oz    White Beans (in a jar; drained and rinsed)

  4 cloves        Garlic, sliced thinly

  1 g     1 tsp   Pimenton Dulce ("sweet" paprika, not picante)

 10 g     2 Tbs   Flour, for dusting

                  Black Pepper

                  Salt, if the Bacalao is a bit mild

 60 ml  1/4 C     White Wine

                  Parsley, chopped fine (for garnish)

All the ingredients except the Pimenton

Spread the 10 ml Olive Oil in a heat proof tray or casserole (llauna).

If using, drain the White Beans, rinse, and shake off the water, and add to the tray in a single layer.

Cut the Bacalao into two pieces for serving; pat them dry with paper towels.

Mix the Pepper (and Salt if needed) with the Flour.

Lightly dredge the Bacalao in the Flour, coat thoroughly, shake off extra.

Preheat the oven to 200c / 400f with heat from top and bottom if you can.

Heat a large skillet over medium with the 40 ml Olive Oil.

Add the Bacalao to the skillet with the Oil, skin side up.

Sauté 3-4 minutes per side, depending on thickness: you want to develop a light golden crust but you'll finish cooking it through in the oven.

Remove the Bacalao to the tray on top of the optional Beans, skin side down.

There should be a thin film of Oil left in the skillet, remove some if it's too much.

Lower the heat of the skillet and sauté the garlic, stirring often, until fragrant.

Remove from heat and add the Pimenton Dulce and stir quickly -- it becomes acrid if it burns so don't expose it to too much heat.

Add the White Wine and return to the heat for a few minutes to drive off the alcohol and concentrate, then drizzle over the Bacalao in the tray.

Bake the Bacalao in the tray 5 minutes or until barely cooked through; don't overcook it or it will dry out; it should flake into large moist chunks.

Plate each cut of Bacalao with the optional Beans.

Garnish with Parsley.

I cooked the Parsley with the sauce but it muddies the appearance; garnish next time

Rossejat de Fideus

Rossejat means "roasted" in Catalan, here referring to rice or noodles which have been browned in oil before cooking. We're using short noodles here: "fideus" in Catalan or "fideos" in Spanish. Taste Atlas describes it succinctly: 

Rossejat de fideos is a seafood dish consisting of thin noodles toasted in olive oil, cooked in fish broth with cuttlefish, prawns, or shrimp, and typically served straight from the pan with allioli. It belongs to the same family of seafood-and-pasta preparations as fideuà but has its own character and place at the table.

In turn, fideuà is basically a paella made with short pasta instead of rice. I've written about it it before, with varying degrees of fidelity: Ravalistan, all’Assassina, and Casual. 

This Rossejat is less complex, coming together quickly, especially with thin noodles. It's surprisingly tasty for such simple ingredients.

Note how the short noodles have stood up vertically

This recipe is based on one from Spain on a Fork which has a helpful video. I prefer the thin "angel hair" noodles to the spaghetti-thick fideus; my package indicates they take only 2-4 minutes to cook, rather than 6-12 for thicker ones. I've added some Choricero pepper to the base to enrich the flavor, and topped with sautéed Squid for our dinner. Use a flavorful fish stock; Irene made a richly flavored one I used here. I prepared this in a thin Paella on a portable gas burner, but you can use any pan you like, even non-stick.

This serves 2.

400 ml      Fish Stock
            Olive Oil, extra virgin
250 g       Squid, cleaned
125 g       Fideus, thin, "angel hair"
  3 cloves  Garlic, minced
  2 g       Pimenton Dulce (1 tsp)
  1         Choricero Chili, dry, seeded, hydrated, chopped fine
  1         Tomato, flesh grated, without skin
  4 g       Parsley, finely chopped (1 Tbs)

            Salt

            Pepper

Heat the Fish Stock in a pot to a bare simmer so it will cook the fideos quickly.

In a Paella or other flat pan, heat some Olive Oil, and then sauté the Squid until browned; remove and slice the tubes into rings.

Add more Olive Oil if needed and sauté the Fideos until toasted, a few minutes; stir frequently as they can burn quickly; reserve.

Add the Garlic (and Olive Oil if needed), and sauté until softened. Add the Pimenton and stir quickly and briefly so it doesn't scorch, then add the chopped Choricero and cook for a minute. Add the grated Tomato pulp and Parsley, and cook a few minutes to concentrate the flavor and thicken.

Add the browned Fideos and the Stock, and stir to distribute everything. Crank up the heat and simmer vigorously for a few minutes until the Fideos are barely cooked; don't let them get mushy.  Ideally, the Fideos will be al dente with just a little of the Stock left in the pan; if not, crank the heat or add more Stock as needed. Add Salt and Pepper to taste. Near the end, top with the Squid.  Turn off the heat and cover with a lid for a few minutes to let the Fideos absorb all the Stock.

If you're lucky, you'll notice that most of the strands of Fideos will have stood up vertically. I don't know why this happens but I've seen it in my better attempts, as well as in photos online. 

This should be topped with a zesty Aioli (Rapidísimo, Toum), and served with a strong red wine to stand up to the rich flavors.

2025-12-12 Not as tasty -- stock? choricero?

I made this again, same as before (except I added a bit of Perch I needed to use) and it lacked the rich taste it had before. It was a different batch of Irene's gelled Fish Stock, a I let the Choricero hydrate all day.  Perhaps the fish stock was not as tasty as before, and maybe I took too much flavor from the Choricero.

It looked good, and again the Fideus stood up

Next time, use Choricero pulp (easy to find in jars here), and taste the Stock to see what it's like.

Casual Fideuà: easy, quick, slightly nontraditional

Fideuà is Valencian dish made similarly to Paella but uses short thin noodles instead of rice, and this makes it much quicker to prepare. We've made a number of variations in the US (with Spaghettini) and Barcelona (Ravalistan, Assassina). This version was driven by hunger and a "what's for dinner" moment: it comes together quickly, for an easy weeknight meal. My biggest cheat here is using a non-stick skillet instead of one of my paella pans and it worked fine! It took only 35 minutes to make.

Meatballs aren't traditional but this dish is tasty

The first time I made this, I rushed and skipped the Sofrito and it lacked flavor. The second time, with Sofrito, was much fuller in flavor, and I used monk fish for the protein; happily, the noodles stood up in the pan when done, a curious effect that seems to mark a well made fideuà. Here, Fideuà is usually made with fish/shellfish, but I'm using what's on hand, even if a bit nontraditional: Irene's mixed stock and her mini meatballs.

Most recipes seem to use 2-to-1 to 4-to-1 ratios of liquid-to-stock (by weight). This one from a chef seems way off, with a 10-to-1 ratio (!), and starts and finishes in the oven -- too fussy. The one from BBC looks pretty good but seems to use an excess of tomatoes in the sofrito. This recipe is quite detailed and looks authentic.

The noodles (Catalan fideus, Spanish fideos) come in a variety of thicknesses, and I prefer a rather thin one, so I'm using our local Bonpreu store brand cabell d'angel (angel hair) which the package says cooks in only 2-4 minutes, so the final step is fast; thicker noodles take longer, of course. 

The only tricky bit with this is that you want the pasta barely cooked  and all the liquid absorbed: if the pasta is threatening to get too soft, crank the heat all the way up; if the noodles aren't cooked enough, lower the heat and maybe add more stock or water.  You want to dry it out to finish to develop a little crusty base similar to socarrat in paella.

It's typically served garnished with lemon wedges and a garlic-y allioli (try my eggless toum or rapidisimo).

Serves 2 for dinner with a side salad

375 ml      Stock (fish, chicken, etc, as appropriate)

            Olive Oil

200 g       Mini Meatballs (or other protein)

125 g       Fideus/Fideos noodles, thin

1/2 medium  Onion, diced

  1         Ñora pepper (hydrated) or half a Red Bell Pepper, diced

  2 cloves  Garlic, sliced thinly

  1 medium  Tomato, grated

            Salt

  2         Lemon Wedges

In a pot, Warm the Stock and hold.

I'm using a 25 cm (10 inch) non-stick skillet for the Fideuà because neither our old induction cooktop nor portable gas burner heat very evenly; I'd like to try this on our BBQ with our proper paella pan.

 

If you use a firm protein (e.g., monk fish, squid, meatballs), sauté it first in a bit of Olive Oil until barely done; reserve.

Add a bit more Oil if needed and sauté the Fideus Noodles until lightly browned, reserve.

 

 

Add the Onion and sauté a bit, then add the Ñora or Red Pepper, and cook until softened.

Add the Garlic and cook to remove the raw edge.

Add the Tomato and cook the entire Sofrito until a bit dry and thickened to intensify the flavor.

Taste and add Salt as needed.

Add the Noodles back to the Sofrito pan and stir it to combine thoroughly.

Add the Stock and give it one gentle stir to combine well;after that, don't stir the noodles, it makes them sticky: instead, give the pan a shake if you need to.

 

 

Cook over medium-high to high heat: the thinner the Noodle, the less time you'll need to cook and absorb and evaporate the Stock (I needed high heat for these very thin noodles).

Top with the cooked Meatballs (or other protein) to heat through.

Check the texture of the noodles and adjust heat as needed: when al dente, crank the heat up to drive off the rest of the liquid; listen carefully for a little sizzling -- you may also begin to smell a bit of crust forming, check the bottom with a fork and remove from heat when mostly dry.

Garnish with Lemon Wedges, garlic sauce, and serve.

 

Note dark skin on left

Fork holding crusty skin

 

Canelones Rossini: pâté for the gourmet

Canelones/Canalóns are well-loved in Catalunya; this blog post has a good history. The "Rossini" version is a bit fancy, adding pâté per the composer's reputation as a "militant connoisseur". This recipe comes from a Canal Sur video. 

We've made Canelones before with homemade pasta. Here in Barcelona, every store carries "placas" of Canelones: sheets of dried pasta that are uncooked or precooked. The original recipe used "carne" (beef) but beef/pork mixes are common, as are ground pork, chicken, and turkey -- you can use whichever you like. Rossini may have used Foie Gras, but Pâté has a better texture for this and is much more affordable. You can tweak the vegetables in the filling, but I think Onions should definitely be included. Other recipes don't use the veggies, add ham, while some mush up the meats and add cream, but we find the texture of the ground meat more pleasant. Tomate Frito is a cooked tomato sauce, thicker than uncooked puree. 

The box of uncooked sheets had 20 sheets, while the precooked had 18 but ours stuck mercilessly so we ended up with only 12 -- not doing that again! It's not nearly so common to find the pasta tubes I'm used to seeing in The States.

This makes 4 servings, and they reheat gracefully in the microwave.

 20 sheets  Canelone pasta (uncooked)

            Olive Oil

  1         Onion, fine dice

  3 cloves  Garlic, finely sliced

  1         Carrot, grated

  1 small   Green/Red Pepper (mild), finely diced

300 g       Ground Beef/Pork mix

 60 ml      Tomate Frito [4 Tbs]

120 g       Pâté

            Salt

            Pepper

 50 g       Flour

 50 g       Olive Oil

500 ml      Milk

            Nutmeg

            Cheese (e.g., Parmesan, Manchego), grated or sliced

Given the problem we've had with the precooked sheets sticking, I strongly suggest the uncooked pasta sheets; the precooked ones don't save much time, really. Bring a large pot of salted water to a strong boil and drop the sheets, one-by-one, into it, and stir so they don't stick to the bottom nor to each other. Boil for 12-15 minutes per the box -- we wanted a bit more texture so stay to the shorter time. Rinse in cold water to stop cooking and prevent sticking. Remove and lay on kitchen towels or directly on an oiled counter to dry.

Meanwhile, start the filling.

Sauté the Onions, Garlic, Carrot, Pepper.

Add the Meat and sauté until cooked.

Add 60 ml Tomate Frito and combine.

Turn off heat and add Pâté, then mix to meld the ingredients.

Add Salt and Pepper to taste.

Adding pâté to veg and meat

While that's cooking, prepare the bechamel.

Cook the Flour in the Oil until the Flour's cooked; a whisk is perfect here.

Add the Milk and whisk to make a Bechamel with a texture of light cream.

Grate in the Nutmeg.

Add 2 Tbs Tomato Sauce.

If it's a bit thick, add Milk; if too thin, boil to reduce.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Add a bit of Oil a baking dish (we used three Pyrex loaf pans) and spread; this keeps the pasta from sticking to the dish, and causes them to develop a slight crunch on the bottom.

Lay out a few Pasta Sheets and add about a finger-sized line of filling.

Roll them up, overlapping the seam a little, and place them in the baking dish or loaf pan seam side up so the serving spatula doesn't unwrap them

Top the Canelones with the Bechamel, then add grated/sliced Cheese.

Bake 20 minutes until the Cheese is golden and the filling is heated through.

Let sit a few minutes to set up, then serve.

Butifarra con Garbanzos: Pork Sausage with Chickpeas

Butifarra (pork sausage) is omnipresent here in Barcelona, and we're using the basic mild form rather than negre/morcilla (blood), ous (egg), or other forms. Chickpeas are also super popular, like the many forms of beans and legumes. We've got plenty of both on hand, so wanted a dinner that combines these, not necessarily together in a stew, but as complements. 

I'm taking ideas from José Andrés "Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America": Moorish-style chickpea and spinach stew, and Butifarra amb Mongets del Ganxet "Daniel Patrick Moynihan" (so "inside the Beltway"!); and Penelope Casas "¡Delicioso! The Regional Cooking of Spain" recipe Espinacas con Garbanzos a la Sevillana. Chickpeas combine synergistically with spinach: earthy, rich, and much more tasty than it sounds; it's a classic dish here, and there are many variants, including ones with bacalao around the holidays.

Irene cooked up a mountain of dried chickpeas in the Instant Pot: it makes fast work of the beans, so I'm using her pre-cooked beans and some of the left over cooking liquid here. 

Serves 2

 35 ml     Olive Oil (2 Tbs)
  2        Butifarra (225 g total)

  3 clove  Garlic

250 g      Chickpeas, cooked
 80 ml     Chickpea cooking water

  1 slice  White Bread, 1 cm thick, crust removed
  1 Tbs    Sweet Pimentón
  1 Tbs    Spanish Sherry Vinegar
250 g      Spinach, chopped
  1 g      Cumin, ground (1/2 tsp)

  1 g      Rosemary, fresh, minced (or 0.5 g dried)
to taste   Salt
to taste   White Pepper

Sauté Garlic and Butifarra in Olive Oil; when the Garlic is lightly browned, about 3 minutes, remove and reserve; continue the Butifarra until cooked, 8-10 minutes total; reserve.

Brown the Bread on both sides, a couple minutes each; remove.
Let the pan cool then add the Pimentón, then Sherry Vinegar to prevent Pimentón from burning; remove pan from heat.
Smash the Garlic and toasted Bread in a mortar to make a thick paste.

Add the Chickpeas, Chickpea cooking liquid, and Spinach to the pan and simmer to lightly cook the Spinach, about 5 minutes.
Add the Garlic/Bread paste, it should be a thick stewy sauce.

Season to taste with Salt and Pepper

Add more Chickpea Liquid if it's getting too dry.

Reduce heat to low; place the cooked Sausage next to the stew to warm it through and let the flavors combine, 5-10 more minutes.

Plate the Sausage then ladle the Chickpeas stew next to it.

Fideuà all’Assassina con Albondigas: crunchy culture clash

I first heard about spaghetti all’Assassina in Cooks Illustrated (pay wall, try a "reader view" plugin) and  New York Times and others describe it well. The pasta is cooked in the manner of risotto then is finished in a way that provides an interesting a crusty texture. We loved the intensity (no water to dilute the pasta flavor) and crunch.

I thought it would be fun to make a Catalan-oriented mutation. Fideuá is kinda like a paella but made with short pasta strands: I wanted to use these for my crunchy texture, so I added a step of browning the fideuà noodles in oil.  I used a simple tomato sauce to hydrate, and decided to add meatballs to make it really inauthentic -- in a fun Italian-American way; "albondigas" are Catalan meatballs, typically served as a tapa by themselves, not on pasta. :-)

This was easy to make, and kinda fun. Irene makes our meatballs and albondigas, but the first time we made this we used ones pork+beef ones our grocery store sells pre-madeeef ones, and they were fine. The measures are approximate, use onions and garlic in the sauce as you like. 

Serves 2 for dinner.

  2 cloves Garlic, minced

125 g Meatballs, small
xxx g Onion, diced
125 g Fideuà noodles (mine were quite thin)
500 g Tomatoes, canned, with their sauce
      Spicy Chili peppers
      Olive Oil

Saute the Onions and Garlic in some Olive Oil.

Whiz the canned Tomato and its Juice until smooth; add Chili peppers, Onions and Garlic, and whiz again.
Add to a pot and warm the sauce.

Add Oil to a skillet and brown the Meatballs on all sides, continue until cooked through; add to the sauce to keep them warm.

To crust the pasta, I strongly suggest a non-stick skillet, as the sauce's acidity can damage the patina of carbon steel and possible a well-seasoned cast iron pan.
Add some Olive Oil to a non-stick pan on medium, add the Fideuà, and stir occasionally to brown through a bit.

Add the sauce, a bit at a time -- like risotto -- until it's absorbed; continue until the pasta is mostly cooked through. Leave the meatballs in until serving time.

Now it gets interesting: Turn up the heat, and when you hear a sizzle, use a spatulu to flip over the pasta to the hot skillet to create a crust; don't be timid here, press it down a bit to get good contact. When it's developed the crunch, flip again. Continue until you've got lots of crusty bits -- it's the best part. 

Combine with cooked Meatballs and serve.

Samfaina amb Bacalao: Easter dish of salt cod with stewed vegetable sauce

Samfaina is a classic Catalan dish of stewed eggplant with a sofrito of onion, garlic, and grated tomato; it's frequently a side dish to meats, or used as a sauce, as we do here. Ratatouille is a more famous French version, but Claudia Roden and makes the case that this preparation of vegetables originated in Spain, since the Arabs introduced the eggplant to the Iberian peninsula long ago; both she and Coleman Andrews point out that peppers and tomatoes came from Spain's conquest of the "new world" and were widely used here before they appeared in French cooking. 

I'm drawing from Coleman Andrews book "Catalan Cuisine" for both Samfaina and a chef's take on Bacalao amb Samfaina. Claudia Roden's recipe in "The Food of Spain" is similar, but she adds the vegetables in stages. Directo al Paladar has a recipe including bacalao that is detailed with pictures. Many recipes include zucchini, but Roden doesn't like that version, and I don't think it adds much.

The red bell peppers we get in Barcelona are huge, compared to the green/red bells we got in the US. The eggplant I got here looks like a smaller version of the "globe" version in the US, but I think any variety (including slender Japanese) would work fine. Proportions are approximate, below is the weight of the veggies I had on hand. 

Bacalao on Samfaina, with white beans and crunchy breadcrumbs

This serves 2 but you'll probably have extra samfaina; keep it to serve with other dishes.

 50 ml     Extra Virgin Olive Oil, as needed

150 g      Onion (1 medium), chopped

  4 cloves Garlic, minced

330 g      Eggplant (1 medium), skin on, 1-2 cm dice

240 g      Tomatoes (4 medium), grated or chopped

300 g      Red Bell Pepper (1 large), skin on, seeded, 1-22 cm dice

250 g      Bacalao, hydrated 2 days to desalinate, skinned

           Flour

           Olive Oil

Heat the Oil on medium with some Salt, add Onions, cook covered for a few minutes.

Add Garlic.

When onions are soft, add Peppers and Eggplant; add Oil if needed.

Cook covered on medium for 30-40 minutes.

Uncover, increase heat a bit, cook until liquid has evaporated, stirring occasionally.

Add Tomatoes, continue cooking uncovered, until liquid evaporates again and vegetables are very soft, probably another 20 minutes. 

Season with Salt and Pepper.

Dry Bacalao thoroughly, cut into 2 serving size pieces; dust each with flour then sauté in a small amount of Oil on all sides until golden-brown. 

Add on top of the Samfaina, cover, cook on low until fish is cooked through.

Serve by spooning out some Samfaina onto plates and top with Bacalao.

Mahi Mahi Pil Pil #2 sous vide: lower temperature, less oil

We discovered that Mahi Mahi releases the emulsifier (like Bacalao) that builds the creamy Pil Pil sauce. This time, we'll try lower fish-friendly temperature and less oil, since the sauces expands like a mayonnaise. We're using sous vide again to control the temperature and minimize oil; this turned out very well.

Mahi Mahi with Pil Pil sauce, served with asparagus and patatas bravas

Our previous work with Bacalao and Mahi Mahi used temperatures from 90C/194F down to 65C/150F, and this time we'll go to 60C/140F.  We got a vacuum packed pair of filets, skin on; we believe the emulsifier is under the skin, but cannot prove it. We freeze a bit of oil, and vacuum bag it with the fish, traditional garlic and chili. It doesn't take long, about 30 minutes.

312 g       Mahi Mahi, as 2 skin-on filets
100 ml      Olive Oil
  4 cloves  Garlic
  2 whole   Chili
            Salt

Put 50 ml of Oil into 2 bowls and freeze hard so it doesn't get sucked out when vacuuming the bag.
Chill the filets of fish in the freezer so they won't lose water when vacuuming, or leave frozen if they came that way.
Use two vacuum bags, and place a filet in each, with a frozen Oil puck, 2 cloves Garlic, 1 Chili each; seal.

Cook the bags in a sous vide bath heated to 60C/140F for 30 minutes.
Strain off the oil into a tall narrow container like a skinny glass: you hopefully should have some white proteins, the precious emulsifier; let it settle out and slurp the protein into a small bowl or glass with a turkey baster.

Note the protein, the emulsifier, settling to the bottom

Building the emulsion

Leave the fish in the bags, hanging in the water to keep warm for service.
In a warm skillet, whisk the protein to whip in air; after a while -- about 5 minutes -- it should start foaming.
Drizzle in some of the fishy oil, a little at a time, and whip until you form an emulsion.

The sauce has incorporated most the oil and come together beautifully

Continue adding oil and building the sauce; if it starts to thicken, whisk in some warm water; season with salt as you whisk. We used all the oil from the bags and it made a proper amount.
Plate the fish, top with the sauce, add the garlic and chili as a garnish.

Results, Next Time

The texture of the fish came out well at this low temperature, but the thicker piece could have used a little more time under the skin. 

The skin on this fish was a distraction, it was soggy but a bit chewy; next time, remove the skin while the fish is raw but put it in the sous vide bag because we believe that's where most of the emulsifier is. (I think it would be more difficult to remove the skin after cooking, as the fish is fragile, and it would cool down.)

This was a perfect amount of Pil Pil sauce, so the reduced oil was the right proportion.

Consider adding some lemon juice to the Pil Pil in addition to the water too give it some zing; maybe this violates some Basque law...

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.