Don’t Move A Mussel
What happens when it takes 20 years to eat something caught half a mile away.
My hometown was the birthplace of the fried clam.
Well, technically, the town NEXT to my hometown.
Close enough.
The point is I grew up in New England on the ocean, and I should have just said that. And even though I grew up on the ocean I didn’t eat seafood until well after graduating college. I didn’t even really know how to swim, but that’s a different story. I totally missed out on clams, cod, lobster rolls, crab legs, fresh caught tuna, swordfish and anything else you can trap, dredge or reel in. Now I know better. And my favorite sea faring food? Mussels.
Cheap, easy to cook and chock full of Vitamin B-12 (the best of the B’s, I always say), mussels are just great. They’re lazy little bastards, too. No hunting, no gathering, they just plop themselves onto a rock or a sunken boat, open their mouths and wait. What a life.
They get a bad rap, though. Not as fancy pants as oysters, nor as versatile as clams. They don’t have their own TV show on Discovery and the Flintstones didn’t use their shells as currency. People say they’re rubbery, or too hard to clean, or that because they don’t make itty-bitty pearls they don’t belong in the same upscale, gentrified condo with the other shellfish. But that’s what makes these blue-collar, blue-shelled bivalves so great (and even more affordable) — steam them in some booze and they fit on the table right next to the Oysters Rockefeller or Clams Casino, without the highfalutin nomenclature.
Ingredients:
2 lbs. fresh, live Mussels
2 Shallots — Thinly sliced
¼ Cup fresh chopped Parsley
4 Tablespoons Butter
Pinch of Salt
2 heads Garlic
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
1 Bottle IPA at room temperature.
Serves 2 for dinner, 4 for an appetizer.
Take the garlic, peel the outer layer, drizzle with olive oil, then roast for 35–40 minutes at 400 degrees. Squeeze out the roasted garlic and set aside.
Clean the mussels. Place them all in a cold water bath and one by one pull them out and run them under a cold faucet to get any dirt off of them. Mussels have beards, so after you donate to their Movember, you’ve got to give them a clean shave. Grab the whiskers sticking out of the shell and pull towards the hinge of the mussel to rip it out. Don’t be gentle, they can take it.
In a 1 gallon pot melt the butter, then add the shallots and sauté on high until you can smell them cooking. Add the mussels and give them a good shake so they wake up. Then add the salt, garlic, and beer.
You already drank the beer? Sigh. Grab another, you flippant alcoholic.
Pick a good beer. If you wouldn’t drink it normally, why would you cook with it? I prefer something grassy and hoppy like the IPA from Breakside Brewing here in Portland. Pick your favorite and sacrifice a bottle, you can always buy more.
Cover and steam for 6–7 minutes. Then serve piping hot with the sauce and some hot, crusty bread to soak it all up. If any of them didn’t open, for the love of God don’t eat them. They’re already dead. Remember, the ones that opened were screaming all the way to the end.
You really can taste the screams.
