For centuries, mankind and cuttlefish have had something of a difficult relationship, certainly from the latter’s perspective. Even prior to the development of the photographic tint known as sepia – a brownish hue that makes the late 19th century appear to have been an unusually dusty period – the ink of the cuttlefish was prized for its color-giving properties. In fact, this cephalopod’s dye is known as ink because that is exactly what much of recorded history was written in.

In an ironic twist, the plight of the cuttlefish worsened when enterprising fisherman saw that the inedible, but highly buoyant, internal structure, known as cuttlebone, could be used to manufacture floats which, when attached to fishing lines, resulted in an even more effective means of catching them. The concurrent discovery that the rest of the poor creature is exceedingly delicious, like a meatier version of squid, only increased humanity’s murderous desire, making its existence almost untenable in some parts of the Mediterranean until synthetic dyes and plastic floats allowed populations to recover in recent times.

In the same general spirit of fishermen making the best use of what they had to hand, it is thought that fideua, a noodle dish cooked in a similar fashion to paella, was the fortuitous outcome of an absent-minded fishing boat’s cook having left his bag of rice ashore sometime in the 1920s. This dish is now popular throughout Mediterranean Spain, but the beach resort of Gandia claims it as its own, styling itself as the “Home of the Fideua” (pronounced roughly “fih-day-wah”). [For more on Gandia, as well as some interesting podcasts on life in Spain, click here.]

And it is little wonder that neither this fisherman nor his countrymen have looked back since discovering the dish. It is as perfect for a quick weeknight meal as it is enjoyed lazily on a summer weekend. Unfortunately, and it’s not clear why, since squid is very popular in the US, cuttlefish doesn’t seem to have caught on this side of the Atlantic and is consequently rather tricky to source. That is, of course, one knows about the wonderful web store, La Tienda, who were kind enough to send us a couple of pounds of delicious Peregrino Canarian sepia recently.

La Tienda PR and marketing manager, Laurie Hager, reached out to us after she’d read our (admittedly pretty fabulous) pork belly pincho moruno post over on the Christian Science Monitor and leafed through a couple of our other posts on Spain – including this one featuring a terrible picture of some very fine cuttlefish a la plancha we ate in Madrid, deciding very correctly that we were worthy recipients of gratis merchandise. Let it be known that we would have posted about this sooner had we not moved house six weeks ago and only just started eating homemade food again after several unhappy weeks eating out of cans as we slowly unpacked our cooking gear.

Let it also be known that La Tienda is seriously committed to sourcing authentic Spanish products for us Americans. Such is their devotion, that La Tienda founder, Don Harris, was recently awarded Spain’s cross of the order of civil merit for his services in promoting the people, culture and foods of Spain in America. Here’s hoping that this post and the body of our work on this site dedicated to Spanish gastronomy helps, even in a small way, La Tienda go from strength to strength.