I’m embracing nostalgia today because I rarely do.
Nostalgia is a bitch.
It gets you in a mood to glorify things that were “great” at some point, but now are merely good memories but they kinda cloud your judgment because they were never THAT good. For me, nostalgia is a bowl of fideo. My mom made the brothy angel-hair-pasta packed with so many vegetables the fideos looked like a garnish. She is a 5:1 veg to fideo kind of mom.
Fideo. It’s a universal dish for all Mexicans, for the home cook, the housewife, the broke college student, or a godinez (what we call 9-6 office workers in Mexico) eating fideo as part of a comida corrida at a fonda.
I love fondas.
There are two general types of fideo: fideo seco, and sopa de fideo. Sopa de fideo is a brothy tomato-based pasta soup usually served to start your meal or as a second course alongside your main course, this being a milanesa, bistec con papas, chile relleno, etc. Fideo seco on the other hand is served as the main dish. The pasta is first toasted in oil to bring its nutty flavors and add texture, it is then cooked in a brothy salsa until the pasta has absorbed most of the liquid and you’re left with a spoonable pasta dish that you can eat with a fork and a knife, or stuff into tortillas for tacos de fideo making this carb-on-carb situation a legendary bite.
Fideo is easy, fast, and affordable. It screams ease of life but still brings up a gasp from the nostalgia and comfort that the dish offers. I make fideo seco by breaking angel hair pasta into 3-inch pieces with my hands *snap-snap*. I fry the pasta in olive oil to develop some color and crispy texture the same way you’d do with a rice pilaf. I cook the fideo in a brothy salsa verde that uses the best that my fridge can offer at a short moment’s notice: cilantro, parsley, shriveling basil, or fresh sorrel (if there was a farmers market run.) It all works here because there is jalapeño in this salsa that adds depth and that addictive quality.
Right before the salsa is completely absorbed by the fideo, I top it with eggs to get poached in the salsa to make it a complete meal. It makes the ideal portable dish if you observe easter and can’t stand the thought of hard-boiled eggs, for those of you celebrating all the green things today, and for all of us who need some softness in life.
Spoon crema all over the fideo, garnish with crumbled queso fresco, and top with cilantro, and you just might hear those gasps from the fideo nostalgics.
All the Mexican nostalgia on this week’s recipe mixtape for you and only for you!