Chorizo and Mushroom Fideua (fideos)

I used this recipe from epicurious for dinner tonight. I was trying to prepare the recipe exactly according to the directions, but ended up having to adapt it because I didn’t realize that there was a difference between Spanish chorizo and Mexican chorizo. Apparently, Spanish chorizo is already cooked and is more solid when its done, so that it can be chopped or sliced. Mexican chorizo is much more “loose”, so I ended up grilling it, then just squeezing it out of the casing and directly into the onion/pepper/mushroom mixture. The chorizo was already pretty heavily seasoned, so I left out the cayenne and paprika, but added about 1/2 tsp of dried oregano, because I like it. The fact that they were not obvious “chunks” or slices of the sausage probably turned out to be a good thing. The chorizo was just kind of incorporated into the sauce, so it was pretty subtle. I used a package of chorizo that had three “links” in it.

Also, the fideos that I used (27 cents per box – you can’t beat that!) came in a 5 ounce box (so I had three 5-ounce boxes, or 15 ounces) and I just couldn’t bear to throw away the extra 3 ounces for no good reason, so I just mixed it all in and added about 6 ounces of extra chicken stock. I was getting tired tonight and the kids were getting pretty hungry by the time this was ready, so I forgot the parsley at the end, but it would have been a nice addition. Cilantro would have been good, too.

I also toasted the fideos before I added them to the sauce. 375 degrees for about 10 minutes, but watch them closely…

The bottom of the fideos got all nicely toasted and crunchy. It’s funny how some of the strands of fideos ended up really small and crispy, while the ones in the middle absorbed all the liquid and were nice and fat and juicy. It was like spaghetti with nice little crispy bits. The kids liked this really well and even tried some of the mushrooms.