SEAFOOD STEW WITH HAND-MADE PASTA

I frequently take inspiration from TV cooking programs. My favorite is probably Cómetelo on Canal Sur because it’s mostly focussed on the cooking of Andalusia, which is where I live. The chef’s recipe for a seafood stew with hand-made pasta looked appetizing and easy to make.

Andrajos is a rustic dish from the provinces of Jaén, Granada and Murcia. It consists of rough pasta cooked with a stew, usually of bacalao, salt cod, or wild game such as rabbit, hare or partridge. The TV chef had used instead squid and shrimp in the stew. 

Seafood stew with cuttlefish, ready to have the liquid and pasta added.

A simple stock made with shrimp shells gives the stew depth of flavor. Chewy pasta and tender cuttlefish add textural contrast. Mint complements the flavors. Adding vegetables--such as baby fava beans--is optional.

My version of the stew has shrimp, clams and tiny fava beans.

Pasta “Rags”

Andrajos

Rough-cut pasta in any shape.

The name of this pasta comes from the tattered shapes of the dough. You can either roll out the dough and cut it into irregular shapes or divide it into nut-sized balls and roll them out in disks. Add the disks of pasta to the stew and use two forks to tear it into smaller pieces or tatters. 

Cook this pasta right in the stew.

1 cup flour plus additional for rolling out

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoons olive oil

¼ cup + 1 tablespoon warm water

Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Make a well in the center and add the oil and water. Use a fork to blend the flour into the liquids. Use the hands to squeeze the dough into a ball. Knead the dough, either in the bowl or on a board, for a few minutes until smooth and stretchy. Cover and let the dough rest 30 minutes.

Divide the dough in half. Roll each half out as thinly as possible, adding a little flour, as needed, to the rolling pin and the board. With a sharp knife, cut the dough into approximate 2-inch squares, strips, triangles or free-form shapes. Place them on a baking sheet covered with a clean cloth and allow them to dry while preparing the seafood stew. (If desired, the pasta can be dried for 12 hours, then stored, tightly sealed in a plastic bag and refrigerated, until ready to use.)

Seafood Stew with Cuttlefish and Pasta Rags

Guisote de Jibia con Andrajos

Cuttlefish cut in pieces.

Cuttlefish (sepia or jibia) is a meaty cephalopod, perfect for a stew as it’s almost impossible to overcook it. Squid (calamar) can be used instead or, indeed, any solid-fleshed fish such as monkfish. 

I used heads-on shrimp in this dish. The heads and shells plus any trimmings from the cuttlefish make a deeply flavorful stock for cooking the stew. If not available, use a store-bought seafood stock. I’ve added fresh baby fava beans to the stew. 

Ingredients for sofrito plus fava beans.

½ pound heads-on shrimp

1 ½ pounds cleaned cuttlefish

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons pimentón (paprika, not smoked)

6 cups water

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

4 cloves chopped garlic

½ cup chopped green pepper

½ cup chopped red bell pepper

3 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped

Pinch of saffron threads

Pinch of dried mint

1 teaspoon cumin

3 ½ cups shrimp stock

Small clams (optional)

1 cup shelled fava beans or peas

Sprigs of fresh mint, to serve

Andrajos pasta

Shell the shrimp, saving heads and shells. Refrigerate the shelled shrimp until ready to prepare the seafood stew. Cut the cuttlefish into approximate 1 ½-inch pieces. Add any trimmings or cartilage to the shrimp shells.

Add cuttlefish to the sofrito.

Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the shrimp shells and cuttlefish trimmings and sauté them on medium-high heat until they are sizzling. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the pimentón. Add the water, bay and salt. Return to the heat and bring to a boil. Cover and cook 30 minutes. Uncover the pan and cook 10 minutes longer. Pour the stock through a colander. Discard the solids. Save the stock.

Heat the 4 tablespoons of oil in a cazuela or wide pan. Sauté the onion, garlic and two kinds of peppers on moderate heat, stirring frequently, 5 minutes. Add the cut-up pieces of cuttlefish to this sofrito. Spread them in the pan and raise the heat. Fry, without stirring, until the cuttlefish begin to sizzle, meaning the liquid has been cooked away. Then stir and fry another few minutes. 

Add pieces of pasta to the simmering stew.

Meanwhile, combine the tomatoes, saffron, mint, cumin and ½ cup of the shrimp stock in a blender. Blend until smooth and add to the pan with the cuttlefish. Add remaining 3 cups of stock. Bring to a boil, lower heat and cover the pan. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the cuttlefish is tender, about 30 minutes.

Add the clams, if using, the reserved shrimp and the fava beans. With the sauce bubbling gently, add the pasta a few pieces at a time. Cook, uncovered, until clam shells open and pasta is cooked, 5-10 minutes.

Allow the stew to rest, covered, off the heat 5 minutes. Serve garnished with mint sprigs.

 More recipes with hand-made pasta:

Chicken Stew with Pasta "Rags".

Rabbit with Beans and Pasta.

NOODLE SALAD IS SO COOL!

I love Asian cold noodle salads—gingery, chile-flecked tofu with rice noodles or fish in peanut-coconut milk sauce and udon (wheat) noodles. They seem to cut through hot-weather stickiness.

While forking (or chopsticking) a cool noodle salad, I thought, why not try a Spanish-style noodle salad? Thus was invented cold Ensalada de Fideuá con Gambas—noodle-shrimp salad.

Big bowl of fideo noodle salad, with shrimp, squid (and a few mussels--I ate most of them the minute they were steamed).

Fideuá, or fideos, are vermicelli noodles. They come in various thicknesses, from fine angel’s hair to  those about the same thickness as spaghetti. They may be long strands, bundled into “nests,” or more usually, cut into short lengths, ready for adding to a pot of noodle soup. One variety has a pinhole through the pasta. They are perfect for making fideuá, a pasta-paella well-known in Catalonia and Valencia regions. That’s the inspiration for this salad. If you can’t get real fideos, use spaghetti broken into short lengths.

The Spanish technique for cooking pasta is to fry it first, then add sofrito and flavorful stock to finish the cooking.  That’s pretty much how I made the noodles for the salad, only, instead of making a sofrito, I added raw tomatoes and chopped peppers to the cooked noodles.

The shrimp stock is essential for flavoring the pasta. If you can’t get shrimp with heads and shells, try substituting other crustacean shells—lobster or crab, for example. Otherwise, use fish stock or clam broth. The recipe for shrimp stock (below) makes more than you need for the noodle salad, so, once cooled, freeze the remainder for another use (or, the next pasta salad).

The salad can be prepared in several easy stages—first the stock, then the cooking of shrimp and squid and, finally, finishing the salad.

Noodles cooked in shrimp stock are packed with flavor. 

Serve the noodle salad as a starter or main.

Garnish with olives and cherry tomatoes.

Shrimp and Fideo Noodle Salad
Ensalada de Fideuá con Gambas

Serves 4.

For the shrimp stock:

1 ½ pounds raw shrimp with heads and shells
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon pimentón (paprika), not smoked
1 cayenne chile (optional)
8 cups water
1 slice lemon
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons vinegar
Bay leaf
Parsley stems

Shell the shrimp, reserving the bodies, refrigerated, for the salad. Heat the oil in a soup pot and add the heads and shells. Fry them 4 minutes. Lightly crush the garlic and add it, unpeeled to the pot. Stir in the pimentón and chile and immediately add the water. Add lemon slice, salt, vinegar, bay and parsley. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook, partially covered, 20 minutes.

Let stock cool 5 minutes, then pour it through a strainer. Discard shrimp shells, chile, bay and parsley. Reserve the stock for cooking the fideo noodles

For the fideo noodle salad:

Water or shrimp stock
Ice
12 ounces peeled raw shrimp
1 medium squid, cleaned and body cut in rings
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups (1 pound) fideo noodles (not fine angel’s hair)
¼ cup finely chopped onions
Pinch of crushed saffron, optional
4 cups shrimp stock
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¼ cup brine from canned olives (optional)
Salt
½ cup grated raw tomato pulp
1 cup chopped green and red pepper
Pitted or stuffed olives, sliced, to garnish
Cherry tomatoes, to garnish
Sliced lemon, to serve
Salad greens, as desired

Bring a small pan of salted water or stock to a boil. (Use enough to just cover the shrimp.) Have ready a bowl of ice water. Add the shrimp to the boiling water and cook them until they turn pink and curl slightly, 2 to 4 minutes. Drain the shrimp and plunge them into the ice water.

Add the pieces of squid to the boiling water just until they turn opaque, 20 seconds. Drain and add them to the ice water. Drain the shrimp and squid and refrigerate them, covered, until ready to incorporate in the noodle salad.

Toast the noodles with a little olive oil until golden-brown.

In a deep skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil. Add the fideo noodles and chopped onion and toast them, stirring, until the noodles begin to turn golden, about 4 minutes. Add the saffron, if using. Add 3 cups of the shrimp stock and cook the noodles on a medium-high heat until they begin to stick, 5 minutes.

Add remaining 1 cup of stock, lower the heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until noodles are al dente, about 5 minutes more. Remove the skillet from the heat. Noodles will still be juicy, but not soupy. Cover and let them set 10 minutes.

Transfer the noodles to a bowl. Add lemon juice and olive brine, if using. Season with salt to taste. Stir in the tomato pulp. Add the chopped peppers and olives. (Save a few olives to garnish the salad.)

Immediately before serving, add the shrimp and squid to the noodles. Garnish the salad with olives, cherry tomatoes and sliced lemon. Serve with salad greens, if desired.

A recipe for fideuá is here.

RAGGEDY PASTA WITH CHICKEN STEW

Where does pasta come from? No, it wasn’t brought from China by Marco Polo in 1292, as the story goes. Pasta, as a cooked paste made of flour and water, may have originated in Persia and migrated throughout the Middle East along with Arab traders. Although the Romans had some sort of pasta, it was Moorish invaders who introduced hard durum wheat to Sicily—a toehold in Italy—and to Spain. 

Pasta in medieval times wasn’t made in the varied shapes and calibrations that we know today. It was more like a poor folks’ stand-in for bread—unleavened balls of dough, hand-rolled and dropped into the cooking pot.

Pasta "rags" cook in a stew with chicken and artichokes.

Spain’s traditional cooking still has some of those kinds of pastas. This is one, andrajos, which means “rags,” so-called because the cooked pieces of pasta look like tattered old clothes. Originally it was a simple soup made by field laborers, consisting of foraged vegetables and greens stewed with garlic and olive oil to which hand-made pasta was added. Filling and sustaining.  

If hunters supplied rabbit, hare or partridge, meat would be added to the pot as well. Shepherd’s might have added pieces of lamb. On church days of abstinence, the stew is cooked with bacalao, salt cod. Today andrajos is made with chicken.

Pasta soaks up the savory liquid and thickens the stew.

Raggedy Pasta
Andrajos

1 ¼ cups flour + additional for rolling out
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup water + additional to make a soft dough

Knead to make soft dough.

Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Add 1/3 cup of water and mix until all the flour is dampened. Add enough additional water (approximately 2 tablespoons) to make a soft dough that can be formed into a ball.

Turn the dough out on a lightly floured board and knead it until smooth and stretchy. Cover with a cloth and let the dough rest for 30 minutes.

Roll dough out thinly.

Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and roll each into a ball. On a lightly floured board, roll out each ball of dough as thinly as possible into a disk approximately 9 inches in diameter. There's no need to make perfect circles, as the pasta will be broken up in cooking. Place the disks on a clean cloth until ready to add to the chicken stew, at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.

Cook the pasta disks in the stew or in a pot of boiling salted water, using two forks to tear them into “rags.”

Saffron gives the broth a golden hue.

The stew is easier to serve if chicken skin and bones are removed.

Chicken Stew with Pasta “Rags”
Guiso de Pollo con Andrajos

The chicken thighs can be left whole or, for easier serving, stripped of skin and bones and the pieces returned to the pot with the pasta.

Trim the artichokes and add them to the pot immediately, so they don’t need to be soaked in acidulated water. To eat the artichokes, pick them up by the tips and bite off the meaty heart, discarding the leaves, or use a knife and fork to separate the heart from the (inedible) leaves. Frozen artichoke hearts can be used or substitute another vegetable such as chard, asparagus or fava beans.

Serves 4-6.

1 ¾ pounds bone-in chicken thighs
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
½ teaspoon saffron threads
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
1 clove
1 teaspoon coarse salt
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
½ teaspoon cumin
6 ¼ cups water
Sprig of thyme
Sprig of mint
1 bay leaf
2 medium artichokes
Pasta dough for andrajos rolled in disks
Chopped mint to serve

Sprinkle the chicken thighs with salt and pepper. Let them come to room temperature.

Heat the oil in a heavy pot. Brown the chicken pieces slowly, 10 minutes. Add the onion and carrot and continue sautéing until onion begins to brown.

Crush the saffron in a mortar with the peppercorns, clove and coarse salt. Scrape it into a blender with the garlic, parsley and cumin. Add ¼ cup of the water and blend until smooth. Add the spice mixture to the pot with the remaining 6 cups of water and 1 teaspoon more of salt. Add the sprigs of thyme, mint and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, 30 minutes.

Cut out the fuzzy choke.

Cut away artichoke stems and snap off outer leaves. Use a serrated knife to cut the artichokes in half. With the tip of a knife, cut out and discard the fuzzy choke. Add the cut artichokes immediately to the pot with the chicken. Continue cooking until artichokes and chicken are tender, 30 to 40 minutes more. 

Put disk of pasta into bubbling liquid.

Remove chicken pieces and artichokes to a serving bowl. With the remaining liquid bubbling, place one of the pasta disks into the pot. Gently push it down with the back of a wooden spoon. Add a second pasta round in the same manner, then the remaining two disks. Use two forks to tear the pasta into raggedy pieces. Let it cook until tender, 10 minutes.

Remove and discard skin and bones from the chicken. Return the pieces of the meat to the pot with the artichokes. Reheat.

Serve the stew with chicken, artichokes and pasta rags sprinkled with chopped mint.

Chopped mint enhances the flavors of this stew.

Another recipe for hand-made pasta:

Rabbit with Beans and Pasta.

More pasta recipes:

Pasta with Sizzling Shrimp.

Seafood Pasta Paella (Fideuá).

Catalan Style Cannelloini.

Penne with Sofrito and Chorizo.

Anti-Pesto Pasta.

Pasta with Mojama Tuna.

Fideo Noodles with Tofu.

Noodle Soup (Cocido Madrileño).

Tomato-Noodle Soup.

Modernist "Noodles."

Noodles with Seaweed and Squid.

Linguine with Squid Sauce.

THYME ON MY HANDS

Wild thyme in bloom on a hillside.

Clumps of flowering thyme on the sun-baked hillside near my house give off a powerful scent. They attract me and the bees. I pick handfuls of the herb to use in the kitchen, to dry for future use. I think thyme is my most favorite herb, so redolent of Mediterranean landscape. I scatter it over simple roast chicken, pork and lamb, add it to soups and stews.

With thyme on my hands, I’m looking for other ways to cook with it. In spite of its availability, thyme is not widely used in the traditional Spanish kitchen. Parsley is absolutely the favorite herb in Spanish cooking. Oregano is widely used, especially in marinades such as adobo. While pots of basil are kept for perfuming the kitchen, the herb is never used in traditional dishes. Although, with TV chefs showing dishes from other countries, more venturesome housewives might experiment with basil.

Rosemary,  which also grows wild in the Mediterranean landscape, may be used to fuel a bread oven, but is rarely added to the cook pot. However, in Valencia, a sprig of rosemary is often added to paella when there is no wild rabbit or snails to provide the subtle herbal flavor.


Thyme is an essential flavoring ingredient in home-cured Spanish olives (the recipe is here). And, it almost always goes into dishes with rabbit, whether wild or farmed.


 Rabbit with Beans and Pasta
Conejo con Gurullos

This dish is typical of Almería in eastern Andalusia. The simple pasta is made by rolling thin cords of dough, then twisting off short, pea-sized bits. The pasta is cooked right in the broth with the rabbit. If you don’t want to make the pasta, substitute packaged orzo or Israeli cous cous (which is pasta shaped in round balls).

 Serves 4.

For the pasta:

Pasta to cook with rabbit.

1 cup flour, preferably hard wheat
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
5 tablespoons water
a few drops of yellow food coloring (optional)

Combine the flour and salt in a bowl or on a pastry board. Make a well in the center and add the oil, water and food coloring. Mix the flour into the liquid until combined. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead the dough until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Cover it and let rest for 1 hour at room temperature.

Take small balls of dough and roll them 1/8-inch thick cords. Twist off ½ -inch pieces (or cut the cords into ½- inch lengths). Spread on a clean cloth to dry until ready to use. The pasta can be thoroughly dried and stored or used fresh.

For the beans and rabbit:

¼ pound white beans, such as cannellini beans, soaked overnight, or
      a  large can cooked beans
bay leaf, thyme sprig, slice onion, salt

6 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoons pimentón (paprika)
½ cup white wine
1 rabbit, about 2 ½ pounds, cut into serving pieces
salt and pepper
1 onion, chopped
2 ounces chorizo, skin removed and chopped
2 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 cups water or bean liquid
sprigs of fresh thyme or ½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves
pasta (recipe above) or ½ pound packaged pasta

Rabbit cooks with beans.

Drain the soaked beans, add water to cover and cook them with the bay leaf, sprig of thyme, onion and salt until tender (30-90 minutes, depending on beans). Drain and reserve the liquid. (If using canned beans, drain them and reserve liquid.)

When the beans are cooked, heat the oil in a cazuela or flameproof casserole and fry the garlic. Remove garlic and crush it in a mortar. Blend in the pimentón, then the wine.

Sprinkle rabbit pieces with salt and pepper. Brown them in the oil. Add the onion and chorizo and fry for 3 minutes. Then add the tomato. Stir in the garlic-wine mixture, water or bean liquid, ½ teaspoon salt and thyme.

Cover and cook 30 minutes. Turn the pieces of rabbit and add the cooked (or canned) beans. Continue cooking until the meat is tender, about 20 minutes longer. Remove the sprigs of thyme.

Uncover the cazuela and turn up the heat so the liquid begins to bubble. Add the pasta and cook until it is tender, about 8 minutes for home-made pasta or 8 to10 minutes for packaged pasta. Allow the cazuela to rest for 5 minutes. Serve in wide soup bowls.

Thyme-scented rabbit, beans and pasta.

Notes on the above: Because I was in a hurry, I bought supermarket packaged rabbit. It is hacked up into small pieces, para paella. Awful, because the bone chips are seriously dangerous. Better to buy a whole rabbit and cut it up yourself or know a trusty butcher who will prepare it for you.