Fideuà Negra Valenciana

Fideuà negra is Valencian, a black seafood noodle dish cooked in the paellera until the noodles drink the stock and finish dry, glossy, and dark with cuttlefish ink. This is not pasta with sauce, and it is not a rice dish pretending. The short fideos cook flat in the pan, the sepia gives the sea, and the allioli on the side is not decoration. It is the bite that wakes the whole thing up.

The method that decides it is the dry cook. Build the sofrito, the slow onion and tomato base, until it is dark, sweet, and almost sticking to the pan. Toast the noodles in that oil, add the inked stock hot and all at once, then leave it alone. Stir now and you loosen starch, cloud the stock, and lose the clean, separate finish a fideuà wants. Let the paellera do its work.

If you are far from Valencia, no hace falta haber pisado España. Use good fresh squid if sepia is not at your fishmonger, and buy cuttlefish or squid ink in little packets from a fish shop or Spanish grocer. The flavour will be a little lighter with squid, less deep and sweet than sepia, but it will still cook properly. What you cannot fake is the stock. Make it from prawn shells and white fish bones, or buy the best unsalted fish stock you can and reduce it until it tastes of the sea.

Serve it straight from the pan with lemon wedges if you like, and allioli for everyone to spoon beside their portion. My Margin on this one is short: do not drown the noodles. Measure the stock, keep the heat honest, and stop before it turns soupy. Siempre sale, si lo sigues.