Project Food Blog Challenge #2: Tackle the Classics Fideua

This week’s Project Food Blog challenge asks food bloggers to get out of their comfort zone and get exotic. Take a classic dish from some far away land and give it your spin, but still keep it traditional. Not knowing if I was going to pass the first round, I got to thinking pretty late in the week. And I kept thinking and thinking, “What dish was I going to do?” With my ethnic heritage being so diverse, I grew up eating many cuisines that most people term “exotic”; with a Vietnamese mom, a German dad and being born and raised in Puerto Rico, that type of background sort of leads to eating all of the far corners of the world.

Then I started thinking about Miami. A mish-mosh of Latin and South American cultures, you can find a bevy of Spanish speaking communities throughout the city - Spaniards, Cubans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Mexicans… After all, Miami is the door way to the USA for most Spanish speaking cultures. The one commonality these cultures and people possess is their language. A light bulb went on and Spain and its fabulous cuisine came to mind. What could I make that would take me out of my comfort zone and really make sense for this competition?

Everyone has pretty much heard of the famous Valencian rice dish “Paella,” but have you heard of “Fideuà ”? Fideuà is a Catalonian noodle based dish cooked in a similar style to paella. It can be seafood based, land based or even a personal take on “Surf and Turf.” In any case, this is my FAVORITE Spanish dish and I’ve never made it. Like making risotto, noodles also have that intimidation factor – if you overcook it, it’s going to suck; and suck pretty badly too (if ya know whattamean…) So I set out on a mission to cook a Spanish dish that has always scared the daylights out of me.

If there is one thing I love about traditional Spanish cuisine, it has to be its personality. Like Spaniards, it is bold, unapologetic, brash and totally “in-your-face”; the words tempestuous and hot-blooded come to mind as well. In addition to tackling an intimidating noodle dish, I also had to make sure my dish articulated this personality and strength that clearly speaks to me; the fideuà needed to scream “MATADOR.” A search for recipes yielded a whole bunch I didn’t like; they were pretty pedestrian, lacking complexity in flavor, technique and showed images that were absolutely feo; that means “ugly” en español. So I decided to take the challenge to another level and make my own recipe based on what I already know about food in general and Spanish cuisine.