Spanish Chicken Fideua

The first spanish dish I learnt to cook.

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   Hello I live in Spain and when I started learning how to cook I wanted to jump straight to making the most difficult dishes my favourite being paella! Paella is traditionally cooked over an open wood fire (which I have only just got the hang of) and the flavour is all about the timing! I made some really awful paellas at the beginning so a spanish friend suggested I started out by practicing with another spanish dish,FIDEUA, which for best results should be cooked over a wood fire but can be cooked on a normal gas stove! So this is my first and still a favourite dish of mine! I hope you enjoy it!
   *To prepare the garlic, peel off the dried skin of the garlic and slice a small slit in each of the cloves.
   * Slice a whole red pepper into thick long strips (you should get about 5 strips from one decent sized pepper) and get rid of any remaining seeds.
   * Whilst doing this, heat up the 300 mls of olive oil in a pan (or enough to cover the pepper pieces), it should be a big pan because everything will be cooking in this, so ideally a pealle pan if not a large wok may do the trick.
   *When the oil is hot, add the garlic still whole first, and let this fry turning it occasionaly until the skin starts to go crisp, then add the red pepper to the oil aswell, careful because the oil tends to spit so put on those gloves!
   * When the pepper is starting to bubble and looks soft take this and the garlic out and put to one side. Now get rid of about 1/4 of your olive oil. *Add chopped onion and when this is starting to go soft add chicken pieces. Fry until chicken is starting to brown then add your chorizo sausage sliced. (You dont have to add the chorizo if you dont like it, the recipe is nice enough with out it, it just adds a bit of umph!) and fry for about 5 more minutes (don let your onion burn though).
   * Add tinned tomatoes and tomatoe puree and give it a good stir.
   * now this is the difficult part because the amount of water depends on your pan, paella pans are flat wide pans, and the water added is about 2 litres, till it reaches the handles. try adding 2 litres and if you think it needs topping up later you can with top up with prepared chicken stock.
   *When the water has come to a boil add your whole garlic and red pepper pieces, 2 chicken stock cubes, chickpeas, saffron and the thyme.
   You can also add more vegtables to your own liking, I tend to add broccoli, but you wont get many spanish that do that though!
   *When it has been boiling for about 15 minutes (on high) you can bring the heat down slightly so its just bubbling softly and add 700 grams of your macaroni or fideua pasta. Give it all a good stir.
   *You must keep stirring or the pasta will stick to the bottom.
   *unfortunatly the bad point of this recipe is you have to be watching it the whole time
   *Add chicken stock as it cooks if you think that your pasta is going to be hard.
   *When it is ready the pasta should have soaked up most of the liquid. Take off the heat and leave for 5 minutes and then serve, either the traditional way in the middle of the table with a big serving spoon or onto plates, and enjoy.
   (served with bread and alioli)