Mussels

Right, normal service is resuming after a couple of days or observing barmy bedlamites in their native environment (I had to look up a thesaurus to come up with those new terms). I felt a bit like David Attenborough. Perhaps I should have swapped the bike helmet for a pith helmet? It might have helped to get me in the mood for observing without being judgemental.

Nah.

To the topic of the day - and a very important one at that. Lunch.

I am trying to eat seafood on the weekends, since for some psychological reason, I think it is harder to prepare than a steak, and thus more time is required to kick back, relax and grill the fish.

That's complete crap of course. Fish takes about 1/10th of the time to cook as steak, and there really is no difference between lighting the BBQ to do a chop as to do a salmon steak. My only other explanation is the smell - our rubbish collection is on Tuesday morning, so the less time the prawn shells and so on stay in the bin, the better.

I have given up putting prawn shells in the freezer, as I always forget about them. I cleaned out the freezer a while ago and found a bag of them from last summer lurking in the back.

Today I decided to cook mussels for no good reason at all. I haven't cooked them in at least 5 years. Don't ask me why. I just went off them. Or perhaps I went off the idea of having to clean and de-beard the little buggers. I used to buy 3 or 4 kilos of them to feed the boys, and then had to spend half the afternoon standing over the sink ripping hairy bits out until my fingers bled. Some people use pliers. I just gave up.

Then I spotted this in a seafood shop today - "live pot ready mussels". The blurb on the packet claims that they are all alive, cleaned, unbroken and de-bearded. That sounded too good to be true, particularly for twelve bucks a kilo.

I had to mull over one big decision in the shop - to buy one bag or two. It's been that long since I cooked them, I could not remember how many would be required to adequately feed two people.



The claim was about 95% correct. One had a beard and three were broken. Apart from that, none were open when they went into the pot and they all opened up after a few minutes of cooking. That has never happened to me before.

In the pot is one leek, chopped and softened in butter and olive oil along with a clove of garlic.

Once the leek had browned a bit, I threw in one finely diced tomato. Well, it wasn't even one tomato. It was a left over in the fridge after I sliced a bit off for a sandwich yesterday. That was followed by some lemon thyme from the garden, and a good splash of the Chardonnay on the right. It's an Evans & Tate. I bought some the other day because I heard they had gone into recievership. That might mean that they will be flogging off their stuff cheaply in order to raise some cash.

I have included this photo as all cooking shows or cook books include at least one wanky photo of a bench covered in fruit and vegetables laid out in an attractive fashion. This is simply what the bench top looks like after I have done the shopping, and before I can be bothered to put it away where it belongs.



After 10 minutes of steaming, I threw in about half a carton of plain cream, let it warm up and then served it up. The bowl on the left has been garnished with coriander, because it is my bowl and junior hates the stuff. It is also well sprinkled with cracked pepper, since he doesn't like that either.



Here it is in close up.



We ate in the backyard, using the cooking pot to hold the empty shells.

In case you think the tablecloth is a bit unusual, it's where we try and feed the monkey. He can make as much mess as he likes when he is eating. Then we wipe down the tablecloth (it's plastic), strip him off, take him inside and toss him in the bath tub.



It took nine minutes (by the timestamps on these photos) to go from bowls ariving on table to this:



Normally, I would also throw in chilli, but junior also has an aversion to that. I am not going to throw it in after everything is cooked. I will either throw it in with the garlic at the start or not at all.

I also had thoughts about throwing in basil, but gave up on that idea as our basil plants currently have about 4 leaves each on them. I'm glad I didn't - it didn't need it. The leek though was smashing - I'm never going to use onion again. I'm also glad that only 2/3 of a tomato went in - you can go overboard with tomato and throw in too many. Moderation is what we need. An elegant sufficiency will suffice.

Was one kilo enough?

Yes. I am stuffed. I am sitting here almost with my belly rubbing up against the keyboard. Might have to go for a ride later to work it off.