Mussels are in season and absolutely at their best right now. To me they are natures ‘Fast Food’ as you can have a delicious meal on the table in under 15 minutes. I’ve been using Roaring Water Bay Mussles from our home patch in West Cork as they are small, sweet and a have a deep orange colour, just how I like mine!
I love the simplicity of this dish. It’s a classic combination but I like to make my sauce by sweating off the veg and reducing down the wine first as I feel this gives a lovely sweetness to the sauce and also gets rid of that raw wine flavour you can get from a sauce when the wine isn’t reduced down.
Mussels are one of those foods that aren’t ‘en trend’ at the moment so they can still be bought extremely cheaply making this dinner all the better. I serve them in a big bowl in the centre of the table. We holiday in France every year and we LOVE Moules Frites so I always make ‘Skinny Chips’ to go with this and we have some bread on the side to mop up all those delicious juices.
There always seems to be something so civilized yet wonderfully social and relaxed about sitting around the table sharing mussels from the same big bowl and eagerly pouring ladle fulls of juice over each individual plate.
And those juices you’ll have left over can be the base for a fish pie the following day!!!
Ingredients:
- 1 leek, washed, trimmed and finely sliced
- 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
- 1 stick of celery, washed and finely sliced
- 1 kg of mussels, cleaned and beards removed (most fish shops sell them in nets now ready to use)
- 1 large glass of white
- 1 x 250 ml carton of cream
- Fresh parsley or dill to serve
- Sea salt and black pepper
- 1-2 tbsp of oil
Directions:
- Heat the oil in a large stock pot or cast iron dish over a medium to high heat. When hot add in all of the vegetables, cover the pot with the lid and allow to sweat for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes the vegetables should be nice and soft and golden. Turn up the heat and pour in the glass of wine, it should bubble up and start to reduce down straight away. Allow the wine to reduce by half before adding in the cream. Let this cook on a gentle heat for a few minutes with the lid on.
- Add the mussels to the hot cooking liquor and give a good stir around to evenly coat with all the sauce. Allow to come back up to the boil and cover and simmer for 4-5 minutes or until all the mussels have opened.
- Serve with lemon wedges and chopped fresh dill or parsley
