Fideuá? What the heck? It’s a traditional dish from Valencia, Gandía to be more precise, which is very much like a paella but made with short noodles instead of rice. In Spain you can buy bags of noodles of varying thickness from “0” which is very fine up to 5 or 6, I think. For this dish a number 3 or 4 noodle is typically used but if you can’t find them where you are, use broken spaghetti (a thin one) instead.
This dish is made with seafood usually, in the same way as a paella, but I made one recently with some Spanish Chorizo. It’s also a good vegetarian dish – use what you like best! It’s quicker and easier to make than paella. Measurements are a little rough, use as much or as little “filling” as you like. For a dry fideuá (so that it looks like a paella made with noodles) use about twice the volune of liquid to noodles, for a soupier version (which is how we like it), use up to 3 times the liquid.
Phew, that’s the maths over with, here’s how to do it!
Ingredients (for 2 people)
- 2 chorizo chopped into small chunks
- A few slices of finely chopped jamón (or pancetta or bacon)
- 4 fat cloves of garlic crushed
- 1 stick of celery, finely chopped
- Half a red pepper, finely chopped
- About 6 mushrooms, finely chopped
- About half a cup of chopped tomatoes
- 200g fideos (noodles)
- About 400ml of vegetable stock (or chicken stock) for a dry dish and 600ml for a soupier version
- A pinch of powdered saffron
- A level teaspoon of sweet pimentón
- A pinch of hot pimentón (optional)
- Salt and Pepper
- Olive oil for frying
- Wedges of lemon and chopped parsley to serve
In a deep frying pan or paella pan gently fry the chorizo, jamón, garlic, celery, pepper, and mushrooms until the chorizo starts to crisp. Add the tomatoes and cook for a minute then add the fideos and stir them into the mix then add the stock, spices and season lightly.
Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 8 minutes until the fideos are nearly cooked. Add more stock if it gets too dry before it’s cooked. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid or tea towel and allow to rest for 2 or 3 minutes. Check that the fideos are cooked to your liking and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
Serve sprinkled with freshly chopped parsley and wedges of lemon to squeeze over.
And if you have a few minutes and want to see a master in action, enjoy this video…(it takes a few seconds to start and is in Spanish bu the chef is … er… easy on the eye!)
Chica Andaluza 
I love this dish! Well done! It’s just a slightly different experience than rice-based paella, but it changes everything. This dish is like seriously one of my faves!
My fave too – even over paella!
I lurve fideua! Never tried it with chorizo and mushrooms, actually, I don’t think I’ve ever made it at home! I think it’s about time I try, right?
Big Man told me I couldn’t really call it fideuá as it didn’t have seafood but he still enjoyed it as much as I did!
Hahaha! As long as you enjoyed it, call it whatever you want!
🙂
I can imagine sitting out side at lunchtime in Spain eating this now. I love it too 😉
…with allioli 🙂
Ooh yes and ltos of lemon!
I prefer it to paella!
Thanks for the introduction to Fideua Tanya! Always wonderful to learn about a new dish from your part of the world. As always… packed full of flavour!
Glad you enjoyed it – pretty much everyone knows of paella but very few have heard of fideuá which is quick and easy to prepare and so tasty!
One of our TV chefs uses the broken pieces of spaghetti left in the bottom of the box to make a dish like this. From what I recall, it’s nowhere near as flavorful as yours or I would have tried it ages ago. Yours has all of the major food groups: pasta, garlic, sausage, and bacon. I could make a big pot of fideua and live off it for days without a complaint. 🙂
I really love this dish and it would be perfect made with all those little bits of pasta in the bottom of the box!
I love the look of this alternative paella… and am about to watch the video – with breakfast!
It will make you hungry…. 😉
When are “they” going to invent scratch and sniff screens and even better one where you can put your fork / spoon through the screen to have just a teeny tiny taste. SCRUMITY!
🙂 Mandy xo
We could sample a little of everyone’s food (you’d have to get in early) via the blog but if you read the post late you’d just find an empty dish 😉
Lovely! I love fideuà, I discovered it 10 years ago when I first arrived to Catalonia, it’s very typical here as well,. And as you’ve said, as paella, they are in fact very versatile dishes. Although the most famous versions are made with sea food you can cook them with almost everything! and this one is looking so yummy, who doesn’t like chorizo?
Yes, the real deal should have seafood – but we like to break the rules!
How delicious….fideos have never come my way yet. I shall have to check this out.
They’re just little short strands of pasta from the very thin vermicelli/angel hair up to thick old pasta sized….so quick to cook, which is probably why I love them!
I love paella but have never tried this dish, now I will! Do you use a paella pan?
Yes, you can definitely use a paella pan…or a deep frying pan, but I have also done them in a saucepan, it just doesn’t work for serving from dish to plate on the table 😉
Thanks! I will definitely be trying this.
Enjoy!
That looks worth trying – and useful for mopping up the small amounts of veg in the fridge?
Absolutely – great for using up whatever is lurking!
Completely new for me!
I like the video. And I like your post.
Thank you – I hadn’t heard of them until I lived in Spain!
Do I get points for having met the name previously?! (Although I had no idea what it was!) 😉 I love how the soupy version especially reminds me of Asian dishes. I take it 0 would be like a vermicelli but wouldn’t be wonderfully slurpy with something like a zitoni? Mmm, pasta, noodles, it’s all good! 🙂
Oh yes, 10 out of 10! You’re right about it reminding you of Asian dishes – I think you could make your own version with anything that took your fancy…and then slurp away!
Fiduchi-whoozafitz?!!! Sounds foreign to me! I loves me a good short noodle dish. Slips down nice and easy without too much of that dreadful chewing that my mother used to insist upon. “HA mum…I can just swallow this bowl in its entirety without chewing once!” I would skip the meat of the sea and would hope that you would forgive me this mortal sin to a Spaniard…I realise that wheat gluten and tofu have most probably been added to the list of cardinal sins right up there with adultery and coveting thy neighbour’s arse in the Vatican but when you are a vegan “needs must” and whatchagonnadoeh?
Quicker to make than paella eh? You are ON! Dry fiduchi-whoozafitz sounds a bit more difficult to swallow but I will give it a go…I will give anything a go once…
“Whew!” glad to see fellow soupy lovers. I love soupy things and am especially fond of that white pappy soupy rice dish congee that the Koreans so thoughtfully created in order for narf7’s to get over excruciating hangovers that are completely NOT my fault!
Math? MATH?!!! I am afraid if math is involved I am going to have to bow out of this otherwise promising dish. Math and I go WAY back and have been mortal enemies since I was introduced to a new way of accounting when in my first year of school that involved little chunks of wood called “rods” that we had to mix and match in order for we pre-decimal children to learn all about our new decimal system. The rods were replaced by real math soon after and it all went to buggeries after that…everything mathematical ever since has been viewed through slitty hazy eyes of mistrust.
My slitty hazy eyes just spotted olive oil and lemon juice so they opened a tad more and I spotted fresh chopped parsley a bit further down and after watching Mr hunky in action (with one eye still ready to “slit” at a moment’s notice should ANYTHING approximating or involving mathematics occur) I reckon I might be almost back to the point where I give this fiduchi-whoozafitz a go. But you can rest assured that at the first sign of mathematics I am scuttling back to my pot noodle!
I laughed so much reading this comment and then had a flashback to a Fawlty Towers episode when some Americans come to visit and start ordering things that Manuel has no idea about like Waldoef Salad – the reverse of your message but you know how those thought processes work! You would be forgiven anything….especially as you are a fellow congee lover. God I love that stuff, a good reminder for me to make it. I love it for breakfast with extra chili sauce…but then I am a woman of unusual tastes! If you eat noodles (gluten free?) then it’s basically like a Spanish flavoured Asian slurpy soup that you can fill with whatever you fancy. And don’t worry about the maths – too dry? Slop some more liquid in… too wet? Cook it for a few minute longer. I’m a genius you know 😉
I KNOW! That’s why I keep coming back here… to worship at the feet of genius 🙂 So I can completely avoid maths altogether? I LOVE IT! Consider it shlumped together and on it’s way down my ever gaping maw to an uncertain fate in my nether regions. I, too, adore congee with chilli sauce and I love lots of garlic as well…may as well let everyone else know that I had congee for breakfast and share the love around 🙂 I am laughing about that episode with the Americans and remembering when the kid wanted mayonnaise instead of the salad cream and Basil thumped him in the back of his head with his elbow and pretended that it was an accident 😉
Love that you know what programmes I am talking about and remember the episodes too 🙂 I will do all your maths as I am a bit of a saddo who enjoys it (thanks to a brilliant Primary School Headmaster who was a mathematician and taught us with such passion between the ages of 5 and 11).
You are SO lucky to have someone who had a genuine love of maths. I don’t actually mind pure maths where you get to work it out as you go and there are degrees of right and wrong but actual regular common or garden maths is “right” or “wrong” and I tend to pick “wrong” as my choice 😦 It is a bugger that most of our day to day life involves maths in various forms but them’s the breaks and whatchagonnadoeh? Just grin, bear it and use your fingers AND your toes (not so easy when it comes to division I can tell you! And when contemplating fractions it gets positively painful!) 😉
Oh, I love fideos!
Yay – another fan!
I think I would like the soupier version as well 🙂
Good for slurping!
A fabulous dish, bravissima! You know I have Always wondered what chorizo is. Here in Sicily it is not available. Our sausages are the salsicce with fennel, and they are not spicy.
My father is from Calabria and from there we eat a spicy sausage which I think is called anduia (I might not have spelled it correctly!). Welcome to the blog 🙂
Gosh, I really love the idea of this, especially using the jamon and chorizo instead of seafood as well as noodles instead of rice. It’s such a refreshing variation! I’m bookmarking this to try. Still got to roast my chicken and organic ones are on sale tomorrow! 😉
A magnificent looking meal!
Thank you so much!
Love your “not authentic version that Big Man loved” and the chefs version. When I lived in Miami, I think every market carried those little noodles. 🙂
Sometimes you just have to try them with a new version 😉
paella with noodles. I’m sold!
What’s not to like?!
I was looking down the ingredients list and sure enough I found what I was looking for – pimentón 🙂 perfect !
Yay 🙂
taste good… i will try this at my home
wow yummy… good