Friday, January 24, 2003

Moules a la Mariniere II, or: Tigger May Like Mussels a Little Bit. So my husband bought the mussels.  He had to go to two stores to find them, in the godawful weather, all while I was having cocktails at a bar in Battery Park City, but he did it, because he’s bidding for canonization and because he knew I’d scream and bitch if he came home empty-handed.  They were even pre-cleaned. For this second mussels recipe, I started by mincing a cup of onions and cooking them slowly in butter for ten minutes.  Then I stirred in a half cup of vermouth, some bread crumbs a made in the blender from the heel of last night’s French bread, parsley, pepper, bay leaf and thyme.  That I cooked for ten minutes or so, under low heat.  Then I dumped in the mussels, turned the heat to high, and cooked them three or four minutes, until they opened up.  That was it. So I was a tad addled on the aforementioned cocktails, and was talking on the phone with my mother most of the time I was cooking, and I was reducing the recipe by quite a lot, so I may have screwed up some proportions or times or something.  The recipe was more than likely not prepared to any JC-like perfection.  But I gotta say, it wasn’t that bad.  These mussels didn’t taste like Port Aransas.  They tasted like some beach that wasn’t plagued by jellyfish and oil slicks.  The credit must go entirely to the mussels themselves, I think – I can’t think of anything I did that would have made any difference, except that I left the job of cleaning to someone else and didn’t try to make them eat flour, which probably was a silly idea.  It’s a good thing I have learned to tolerate the little buggers, since I have three more recipes to go.  Of course, the remaining ones tend to feature a lot more butter….   7:34:26 AM    comment []