Seafood Fregola Sarda

First time I heard of Fregola Sarda was just over a month ago, when I had a masterclass on Southern Italian cooking with Francesco Mazzei at his restaurant Sartoria. He offered to show me how to cook several dishes. I read the menu of Sartoria with great interest, and asked what Fregola Sarda was, as I've never come across this dish before. As it happened, it is a Sardinian type of pasta. It looks like a giant couscous from Israel. It's made of rolled semolina dough, shaped into mini-balls of 2-3mm in diameter and baked in the oven. It is used in soups and stews, often with seafood.
After the class, Francseco gave me a big bag of goodies to take home, including most delicious Italian breads, pasta including some Fregola Sarda and wonderful cakes too.

I tried to recreate the dish I sampled in Sartoria, though I cooked with less glamorous ingredients (I didn't have the lobster or lobster stock). It was still absolutely delicious. Next time I'm visiting Italy, I'll see if I can find this specific pasta.to bring back home.
I looked up for some fregola sarda recipes online, some suggest pre-cooking the pasta.

Seafood fregola sarda
Ingredients:
1 sweet onion, finely chopped
3tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 tomato chopped
2tbsp chopped parsley
250g fregola sarda
500ml fish stock
500ml water
250g fish pie mix
200g shrimps

Finely chop a sweet onion, and fry it in a deep frying pan with the olive oil for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the chopped garlic, parsley and tomato in the last couple of minutes of frying the onion.
Add the pasta shapes, and cook for a minute, stirring, until the pasta is well coated. Add the fish stock and water, cook for about 5 minutes, then add the fish pie mix and shrimps and cook simmering for another 10 minutes. Season with sea salt.
Serve hot with a chunk of bread to mop up all the juices.