Seafood Paella with Toasted Noodles and Aïoli

This is an exotic looking dish, even more so if you heighten the redgolden colour with a packet of paella spice mix (Spigol). I first came across fideua in the Casa Sansa Restaurant in Perpignan; it is a seafood paella made with noodles.

Fideu – a kind of vermicelli – are probably a legacy from the Arab world, where they are called rishta, or reshteh, rather than from Italy. Fine noodles have been eaten in the Middle East, for example with a paste of basi