met mate.

Mussels are on sale at the Dirk. €3 for 2kg (that's 4.5 pounds people). Bargain shellfish, you say? Mmmmmm.

Well, I mean, they are homegrown, it's not like we're in Kansas or anything, they're just coming from 100km away in Zeeland. And mussel season officially starts in a couple of weeks, right? So maybe these are just early. In any case, at that price I don't even have to get buy-in from any possible dining companion: I'm having mussels tonight.

Anyway, here's what's happening to them. Hopefully I'll still be here to report back.

AND AFTERWARDS: It's a real shame that this was such a blazingly improvised recipe, b/c these are the best mussels I've had in a long time. Let's hope they were "ok". Here's what I think went in the pot.

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mosselen a la paramaribo.

3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp peanut oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp finely grated peeled fresh ginger

1 tsp thyme
1 tsp allspice
3/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
2 cups boiling water
1/3 of a chicken bouillon cube
1 cup scallions, chopped
1 habanero chile, halved
1 tbsp Surinamese mango chutney (for anyone who's never tasted this, it's very tart and peppery, more like a lime pickle than the gloppy sweet Major Grey stuff)
NO SALT

2 kg mussels, well scrubbed

1 cup chopped fresh cilantro

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belgian roulette.

Pictured above: the last truffle shavings over eggs and shrimp.

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I'm conducting an interesting/stupid experiment tonight. Mostly stupid, but I guess possibly interesting for being so.

I bought a couple of kilos of mussels at the Dirk yesterday, as I've been doing every couple weeks this winter. For the first time ever, there was a rather terrible smell when I opened the package, something like a wet dog corpse probably.

Out of morbid curiosity and a not-insignificant sense of frugality, I dumped the mussels in the sink, discarded any half-shells or broken mussels, and soaked the remainder in cold, cold tap water for 5 minutes. Just to see what would happen. After draining them, they didn't stink at all.

Here's my experiment: they always say that one bad mussel can make you dreadfully ill. Of course I believe them, because I've been made dreadfully, apocalyptically ill by shellfish before. But I guess that was a long time ago, because I'm ready to chance it again: if I've removed the most suspicious suspects, and all of my remaining mussels appear healthy before cooking, am I still in danger?

Let's find out. For lunch today I cooked all of them and ate 5 of them. The rest I removed from their shells and put in the fridge just in case I don't die. Stay tuned!

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AND? I lived. And then I ate half of the remaining mussels the next day and survived again. Lesson learned? Yes...mussels are not especially enjoyable when you're really suspicious about their toxicity.

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csi amsterdam.

We generally eat pretty well around here. But, gross photography notwithstanding, the last two days have included a couple of the best meals we've made in a long time (luckily there was an external witness that can verify this). Of course: we didn't write down anything we did, so what follows here is strictly a dramatization.

Mara wanted something along the lines of "those red chile mussels you made that one time". Scouring my memory banks revealed that this was based on a Mark Miller recipe for clams, my major modification being the addition of a significant quantity of butter and hard cider. I've tried reducing the butter and it's just not as good, which is probably not shocking news.

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mussels in chipotle-orange broth.

2 kg mussels
1 liter water or vegetable broth
1/2 cup orange juice
1 cup Strongbow or other British cider, or French cidre
zest from 1 orange, minced
100gr butter

6 shallots, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
2 chipotle chiles, pureed
3 tbsp new mexican chile puree

1 can tomatoes, crushed

1 tsp dried marjoram
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

In general, the goal is to get your broth tasting heavenly via 30 minutes or so of reduction, and then add the mussels.

Specifically, ehm...you can start out by sauteeing the shallot and then the garlic in some of the butter, etc. But basically yeah just combine everything but the mussels and the fresh herbs in a big big pot and simmer for 30 minutes or so. Salt to taste, a little bit on the undersalted side, then add mussels and herbs. Cover the pot and simmer for 8-12 minutes or so. Serve with bread and butter.















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squash ravioli in brown butter and sage.
mozzarella and parmesan ravioli with tomato-basil sauce.
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Then, the next night. We still had squash leftover from Sunday's lameness, and since we've made squash ravioli quite a few times in the past, and Mara felt like she needed some Dough Therapy, yis: homemade pasta. It's really a perfect activity for a gunmetal-gray winter day where the temperature is hovering just above freezing, there's a serious drizzle outside, and essentially no motivation whatsoever for you to leave your cosy apartment.

In the past we've always made our squash ravioli with some amaretti cookies crumbled into the filling, but this time Miss M lobbied for an "unsweet" filling. So this is just roasted squash (roasted for an hour at 175C cut side down in a 1/2 inch of water), Parmesan, salt and pepper I think. 

Since the filling is so simple, your brown butter sauce needs to be pretty rocking, and this was pretty perfect if I don't mind saying so myself. Basically take 10 fresh, plump sage leaves and a stick of butter and put on medium-low heat for 10-15 minutes. CRITICAL DETAIL: Watch your sauce very closely after the first 5 minutes, and keep scraping the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon so you can see how brown your solids are getting.

cook eat FRET has an excellent description of how to brown butter here. A notable difference is that I leave my sage leaves in for the whole browning process, resulting in crispy fried sage leaves at the end and a distinctly sage-y butter (but mellowed by having been cooked).



































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