Fideos and Fideu: More on the Mexican-Islamic Connection
Tomorrow I will do a radio interview on the Islamic roots of the Mexican kitchen. I always like to give this a bit of a new twist, so this time it’s noodles.
Here’s a Sunday dinner we had with our friend Jordi and his family just outside Barcelona a year or so ago.
First course: Fideu. Short thin pasta fried until crisp in oil, then cooked in fish broth until tender. Served with aioli. The real stuff. Just garlic and oil.
Second course. The fish, the source of the broth.
Third course. Bought pastries.
Here’s a meal I can have with my neighbor across the street any time.
First course. Fideos. Short thin pasta fried until crisp in oil, then cooked in chicken broth until tender. Served with a few cooked black beans and fresh Mexican cheese on top. (Versions of this are a Mexican standard–many have tomatoes but I prefer them without).
Second course. The chicken, source of the broth, served with one of half a dozen sauces.
Here’s a link to a picture of Mexican fideos, though not the same recipe.
Accidental similarity. Of course not. Mexico has its own old pasta making tradition that goes back, I suspect, to the Conquista though there aren’t many records. But there is some evidence. Here’s a press for pasta in the great monastery of Yurriria in the south of Guanajuato. This is an Augustinian foundation,l a fortress monastery from just a few years after the Conquest. Each of those tiles is a foot square so this is some mean press.
And there are old-established companies making dry pasta in Mexico. Their history is yet to be explored. But there is a sufficient market that the Italians are moving in. See two bags below: traditional Mexican on the left, Italian Barilla made in Mexico on the right.
So what does this have to do with the Islamic connection? Because most historians of food believe that the pasta of Catalonia and Andalucia was Islamic in origin.
I don’t think that there is much doubt that the Mexican connection is Spain>Andalucia/Catalonia.
see:http://adambalic.typepad.com/the_art_and_mystery_of_fo/2007/01/toasted_pasta.html
Not quite as certain about the ultimate origin of the dish. It’s well established in Spain and North Africa, Jewish cuisine via the Islamic connection, but it’s other strong-hold is the Ligurian sphere of influence. In this case it is continuous from Catalonia, though southern France, up into the French Alps (have eaten the local version in Grenoble), down into Liguria and it is also found Sardinia. From memory there was a guild of fideos pasta makers set up in Genoa from the 14th century (will have to fact check).
In otherwords ‘fideos’ historically were likely to have been one of the very early dried pasta and were traded around this part of the Med. If this pasta was establish in Mexico from a very early date it is still likely that it can from the Islamic world directly via Spain, but it is also possible that is was introduced simply as a sort of universally traded food stuff.
In Greece fides is long thin pasta, like angel hair. It is eaten cut into pieces and cooked in chicken broth. Greece has very old pasta making tradition and it seems strange that fides is almost exclusively used as food for someone recovering from illness.
And here comes the interesting part. Skordohylofta (5 x 0,50 cm) and magiri (2 x 2 cm) are two shapes of pasta made in Crete. They are made of flour and water and are usually cooked according to the following preparation: the ½ or 1/3 of the desired pasta is boiled in chicken broth and the rest is fried until crisp in olive oil. Then the fried pasta is also cooked in the broth for 1 minute, or mixed with the boiled one. Skordohylofta and magiri are served with garlic lightly fried in olive oil, the olive oil, fresh local goat cheese and black pepper on top.
(The Andalusian Arabs conquered Crete in 828 AD. The island remained under the Arab domination until 960.)
Thanks, Adam, for reminding me about your piece on fideos which is, as usual, very informative.
I’m not sure I would want to make much of the distinction between fideos coming to Mexico directly from al-Andalus and Catalonia (both influenced by Islam) and the Ligurian trading world. Henry Kamen in his Spain’s Road to Empire has shown definitively that the Spanish Empire in the Americas was conquered and settled by an international consortium not just by Spaniards–and that consortium corresponds pretty closely to the Ligurian trading empire.
Eighteenth century Mexican cookbooks remain full of recipes called Genoan. This is a long time after the Conquest. And of course it’s difficult to know whether the name reflected actual Genovese practice. But it is one indication of the mixed bag of North Africans, Jews, Genoans, Italians, and others who ended up in Mexico.
Mariana the Cretan idea of mixing crispier and softer noodles, if that is the idea, sounds just delightful. Do you have any photos of this pasta?
I imagine that if they were present in the early settlement ships, they would be listed in various inventories? Would be interesting to look at the spelling, which is pretty distinctive, region to region. Sounds like project for a student?
I’m wondering about that press. What kind of flour is usually used in Mexican pasta? Tender wheat with egg, or durum hard flour and water?
Would be a good project for a student, Adam. And I think I know just the one.
Judith, I’m glad you raised the issue of the press. It sits (or hulks) in one of the corridors of the monastery with a label saying “fideo press.” But is it really? It’s clearly a press for something. But I’ve never seen anything about how these thin little noodles were made prior to the invention of modern extrusion presses in the nineteenth century.
Nor can I answer your question about the wheat. Fideos are just a black hole in Mexican culinary history, though I hope gradually to throw a little light down that hole.
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I just stumbled on this almost ten-year-old post but wanted to add my 2 cents worth, in case anyone is listening, to Mariana’s very interesting comment about a pasta from Crete. In southern Puglia, the part of Italy that is closest to Greece and where there are many similarities with Cretan traditions, there’s a very similar dish called ciceri e tria. The ciceri are chickpeas and the tria are a home-made durum-wheat pasta, like tagliatelle, that is partially fried and partially boiled with chickpeas. (You can find a recipe in my Flavors of Puglia and many other places too.) The term tria is said by many to come from Arabic but I believe it entered Arabic from Greek. In fact, when challenged, I will bet dollars to donuts on the ultimately Greek origin of pasta.
Thanks for the contribution to the tangled and fascinating discussion about the origin of pasta. Every bit helps!
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