Mussels, Maggie Style 19Feb09

Hmmm, photo isn’t exactly quite descriptive of how absolutely delicious this dish turned out. I even tried some!!! Mostly the brothy sauce but I did try some mussels. Yes, that’s right. Me, vegetarian of something over 15 years, tried mussels. Great, moving on, now that the news is out, let’s cook this!

oh PS definitely not going to be eating meat so don’t get your hopes up.

Ingredients:
1 kg of fresh mussels (we got a Tasmanian kind)
2 shallots, finely chopped
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 can of peeled tomatoes (the Italian ones are better)
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 stalk of green onion, sliced (you can use parsley but I hate parsley)
1 red chili, finely chopped – the smaller the hotter, pick at your own risk
1/2 cup of white wine
1/2 cup of water
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
fresh ground pepper

Step 1: Clean the mussels
Make sure you scrub and take off the beards of all the mussels. There’s some crazy shit stuck to those guys so make sure you scrub em off. That’s all!

Step 2: The Sauce
In a large pot on medium heat, drizzle in some extra virgin olive oil. Toss in the finely chopped garlic, shallots, onion and chilies. Let all that sweat and fuse together for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle in a couple generous pinches of sea salt and sprinkle in a bit of fresh ground pepper. The onions should be translucent now. SLOWLY pour in the white wine and turn that down to medium low. Let that simmer for a few minutes and then add in the water. Now, in a bowl, squeeze the tomatoes from the can with your hands and make sure you squish em really well so it’s not too chunky. Pour that in the pot and let that simmer for about 15 minutes for all the wine to cook off. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Once it’s reduced a bit, we’re ready to cook the mussels.

Step 3: Mussel time!
Now that the sauce is ready, slowly drop in the mussels in the sauce. Mix it around to get them all in there, cover and let that simmer on medium high heat for about 8 minutes. Now cooking time for the mussels will depend on the size of them and how many are in there. You’ll know they’re ready when they’ve opened up. You might want to take some of the ones out from the bottom while the others keep simmering away. BUT usually, they’re all done at the same time, some are just not willing to open up.

Garnish with some green onion or parsley. Slurp away!

Well, I hope you enjoy this dish. I’ve seen several variations at resturants and I’ve always wanted to try to make it. Looks good and tastes great too.

Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: cooking, food, recipe, recipes, seafood

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 9:53 pm and is filed under food, mmmm, recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.