So this meal was pretty fun to make. It involved shopping for a variety of fresh ingredients. I felt like a snob when asking for specific mussels at the store. Good quality mussels were pretty hard to come by. Of course, living in the desert, I had to expect that. It turns out that you buy mussels live. I imagined them clicking their shells all scary like. Trying to eat me and stuff. In reality, they move unbelievably slow. Something that I learned from my good buddy Chef Jean Pierre from YouTube (I consider him my buddy but he doesn't know I exist) is that if a mussel is partially open, they're just relaxed and sleeping. A gentle massage or tapping the shell will wake them up and they'll close. Who knew??
As for the taste of this dish..... it wasn't too bad. I have never cooked anything like this. At first we were a little bit apprehensive about eating. We weren't sure if they were cooked or not... But like any engineer knows, after a bit of nerdy research it turns out that everything was cooked properly. The mussels tasted amazing. The garlicy-oniony-winey taste was absorbed by the meat and was very juicy. I'm not normally a mussels fan but I gobbled down about 20 of them cause it was so delish...
Gotta practice my photography while I'm at it....
Ingredients:
1 large onion, diced
1 cup of diced tomato
1 small hand full of fresh herbs (parsley/basil)
4-5 cloves of garlic, pressed or finely chopped
1.5 pounds live mussels
1/2 bottle of dry white wine
Olive oil
Any kind of noodles
Step 1: The prep work
Dice up the onion and tomato. Finely chop the herbs and garlic. Set these things aside. Now for the mussels. You'll have to clean off the mussels by removing that weird hair and anything else that doesn't look appetizing. During this cleaning, any mussels that are partially open, try to click them together. They'll slowly close up. Any that are stubborn and won't close are dead. Go ahead and begin cooking the pasta at this point.
Step 2: The sauce
Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan. When hot, pile the onions, tomato, herbs, and garlic in the pan. After a couple minutes of cooking, stir in about half a bottle of good, dry white wine. Heat this to a boil. Taste it and if it needs any other seasonings like salt or pepper, add that now.
Step 3: Steaming the mussels
When the sauce is boiling, add the mussels and cover immediately. Cook these for 5-6 minutes WITHOUT PEEKING!!!! During this cooking time, since the mussels are alive ,they will get hot and open up. At this point, the mussels will absorb all the deliciousness and begin to cook. It only takes 6 minutes to fully cook them. Turn off the heat once you've verified that almost all of them have opened up.
Step 4: Presentation
Put the cooked noodles in a nice dish and top with 10-15 mussels. Drizzle on some leftover sauce onto the dish. Enjoy with the remaining wine. mmmmmmmmmmmmm...........
Step 2: The sauce
Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan. When hot, pile the onions, tomato, herbs, and garlic in the pan. After a couple minutes of cooking, stir in about half a bottle of good, dry white wine. Heat this to a boil. Taste it and if it needs any other seasonings like salt or pepper, add that now.
Step 3: Steaming the mussels
When the sauce is boiling, add the mussels and cover immediately. Cook these for 5-6 minutes WITHOUT PEEKING!!!! During this cooking time, since the mussels are alive ,they will get hot and open up. At this point, the mussels will absorb all the deliciousness and begin to cook. It only takes 6 minutes to fully cook them. Turn off the heat once you've verified that almost all of them have opened up.
Step 4: Presentation
Put the cooked noodles in a nice dish and top with 10-15 mussels. Drizzle on some leftover sauce onto the dish. Enjoy with the remaining wine. mmmmmmmmmmmmm...........
