We’re shellfish of these Mussels

 

One of the great things about writing a food blog (besides getting to eat everything pictured in it) is that it helps psych us into expanding our comfort zone.  This is absolutely one of those occasions, and guess what?  Not that hard at all!

Today we made a French Mussel Bisque recipe (Here’s the video, but its chock full of spoilers) from the great Ina Garten, who was one of the first TV chefs to inspire us to actually try to cook.

All good, non-scary stuff… parsley, leeks, onions, carrots, wine, garlic, butter, cream AND half and half (c’est francais? mais oui!) so far…. not too scary… oh yeah THEN THERE’S LIVE MUSSELS!

So, these guys are living, breathing mussels.  Kept on ice in the fridge, they can apparently stay that way for almost a week.  We’ve always enjoyed eating mussels… typically served in the shell in a big bowl of steaming, flavorful broth alongside crusty bread.  Kinda sloppy eating them that way, so we de-shell in this recipe.

So one of the semi-disturbing parts of mussels is that they have grit and sand inside their shells.  According to Ina, if you soak the mussels for about 30 minutes in water with flour in it, the little guys will cough up a lot of their grit.  Who’s a tough muscle now, eh?

Also, before you cook them, you need to look through them and see if any have “beards,” and if so, pull them out with pliers.  OUCH.

 

Giuseppe says, “This dish gets rated DLC – Deux Le Creuset!” (in that we used our stock pot and our big boy flame pot.

4lbs of mussels go straight into steaming water and white wine.  Mmmmmmm.

After a quick 5 minute steam, these guys are done.  Remember, if a mussel doesn’t open, throw it away!  Once these guys cool off a bit, then we removed the shells (a tedious process, but better to get it over with now instead of at the dinner table).

This is the cooking liquid from the mussels.  It gets double-strained through cheese cloth and a metal strainer to get rid of more of that grit.  Later we’ll pour this broth into the soup.

So the other part of this recipe is a little more familiar.  We basically chop a ton  of vegetables!

Onion, carrot, leek, tomato, and garlic…. all ready to go in one bowl.  Also on top, salt and pepper and a little surprise ingredient:  Saffron.

Saffron rivals gold in terms of price per weight.  Thank goodness its not that heavy!  We exhausted our miniscule supply in this recipe… it was worth it.

All the vegetables get sauteed in butter and simmered for about twenty minutes.  If you look closely, you can see the little red saffron threads.

Then about half of our mussel stock gets added along with whatever white wine was left in the bottle.

Then, at the very end, the dairy and the shucked mussels go in.  Look at all those mussels!

The natural garnishes: crusty bread and parsley.

Viola! French mussel bisque!  Rich, warm, and full of mussel flavor.  The yellow tinge to the broth is a result of the saffron influence. 

And now a word from our sponsor…Mussels Marinara (of Mutts fame):