Spain in a Bowl

For dinner, I adapted this Catalan fried noodle recipe. I made it more delicious, and, I daresay, more Spanish.

This was taken pre-paprika.

So, what is it? Cappellini noodles, tossed with olive oil and roasted to a toasty light brown. Then cooked in fish broth and topped with mussels, paprika, and garlic aioli.

I was on the fence about which seafood to use. The original recipe calls for neither, but it uses fish broth. Seafood broths usually only take a few minutes to make from scratch, and they're hard and expensive to find. Using shrimp would create a neat take on gambas al ajillo, but I like mussels better. Also, for some reason that doesn't even make sense to me, I find shrimp more viscerally disgusting to work with.

The results? Awesomely rustic, like something the little old rural ladies of Volver would make. The paprika, not normally my favorite spice, made it all come together perfectly. Next time, I'd pan-fry the noodles rather than roast, just for user-friendliness, and butter, instead of olive oil, might be interesting to try as well.

The best part of all this? I somehow, inexplicably, did the impossible and made beautiful thick aioli with only a bowl and a wooden spoon.