Catalonia · Main
Fideuà Rossejada
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
Leads with a floral thread lifting the aroma, a briny, maritime salinity.
Ingredients
- 400 g fideus number 2, the short hollow noodles
- 1.2 L rockfish and prawn head stock, held at a bare simmer
- 300 g monkfish tail, in 3 cm pieces
- 12 head-on red prawns
- 250 g cuttlefish, cut in squares and lightly scored
- 200 g sofregit
- 60 g picada
- 1 tsp nyora pulp, scraped from a soaked pepper
- a pinch of saffron, dried and crumbled
- 80 ml olive oil
- salt
- allioli, to serve
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSalted water & the float test
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · fish · shellfish · molluscs
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- In a wide shallow pan, fry the prawns in the oil for 30 seconds a side, until the shells turn scarlet, and lift them out. Do the same with the cuttlefish until its edges curl, and set that aside too.
- Drop the heat and toast the dry fideus in that same oil, stirring without pause, until they are the colour of amber and smell like baked biscuit. This is the rossejat and it takes about five minutes.
- Stir in the sofregit, the nyora pulp and the saffron, then pour in all the hot stock at once and season. It should sit just level with the noodles.
- Boil hard for 4 minutes, then drop to a simmer for 5 more, tucking in the monkfish and cuttlefish. From the moment the stock goes in, do not stir. 4 min
- Spoon the picada over the surface, shake the pan to settle it, and cook 2 minutes more, until the liquid is gone and the noodles at the surface stand up on end like bristles. 2 min
- Lay the prawns on top, rest the pan off the heat for 5 minutes and serve with allioli. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes
- The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
- It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
- The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
- Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
- The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.
Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño or Muscadet
- Also Right
- Assyrtiko or Vermentino
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
The Atlantic’s whites beside the sea’s own liquor: salinity in sympathy, acid keeping everything bright.
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