It’s a classic Mexican side dish, made much like Mexican or Spanish rice, but instead of browning rice and cooking it in broth, you brown thin pasta noodles (fideo) and cook them in broth. “Sopa seca” means “dry soup” which describes the result of noodles absorbing all of the stock. It is one of my family’s favorite dishes of all time. Which is why when my friend Garrett popped by one day with a sopa seca de fideo that he had just made with our mutual friend Peg, a version that used tomatillo sauce instead of a tomatoes, and garnished it with goat cheese and chorizo, I couldn’t wait to try it. So good! Smooth and rich from the homemade stock, tangy from the tomatillos and goat cheese, and spicy from the chorizo niblits scattered over everything, this sopa seca I could eat every day. Peg and Garrett created this recipe for Garrett’s (and co-author Stephanie Stiavetti’s) brilliant, cheese-tastic cookbook Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese. Melt is a cheese-lover’s dream with creative takes on pasta and cheese pairings of all sorts, including this fabulous sopa seca de fideo with angel hair pasta and goat cheese. You wouldn’t normally think of fideo as a macaroni and cheese dish, but that is exactly Garrett and Stephanie’s intention, to broaden our minds and tastes, appreciating the classics while taking on new culinary territory. Bravo! Use a slotted spoon to remove the chorizo to a paper-towel lined plate, keeping the fat and oil in the pan.
