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OK - so the holidays are over. Isn't January just a drag? Sometimes, when the post-holidays blues set in, the only answer is some serious comfort food. So, I flipped through the Top Chef Cookbook, looking for some comfort food - with a twist. And I found it! Ilan's Fideos with Clams and Safron! In other words, yummy noodles with a savory cream sauce, clams, broccoli, and cauliflower! People might at first shrug or seriously question a dish entitled "Fideos" - what does that mean? Fideo is really nothing more than the Spanish word for a noodle. Traditionally, fideos are capellini style noodles. Fideos can typically be found in Barcelona, Spain, often served with seafood, as Ilan did, and even served on occasion with squid ink sauce. I actually love squid ink sauce, but was glad that was not the version Ilan chose, for two very good reasons. First, I really didn't want to figure out how I was going to "milk" uncleaned squid for ink for the sauce - sounded like too much of a messy proposition to me! Second, as much as I love squid ink sauce (both the Spanish and Italians frequently use it), I feel it should be a solitary guilty pleasure - the ink completely gets entrapped in the crevices between your teeth - and it's really not pretty. But I digress! On to the cooking...

Toasting the Fideos: The recipe calls for fideos or capellini pasta. Since they are essentially the same thing, and capellini is easy to find. I broke the capellini into 3-inch pieces, laid them out on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven to toast. OK, I'll admit - I think I might have toasted them for a minute or two too long - about half of them were perfectly golden - but the other half were slightly over-toasted. Heck - I used them anyway.

The Saffron Cream Sauce: The cream sauce was a breeze. All I needed was to mix the cream with the saffron threads (an aromatic golden orange colored spice derived from crocus stigmas with a subtle and slightly woody flavor). Then I added the salt, broccoli and cauliflower together in a saucepan. Easy easy easy.