Musseling In

Ever since Penelope and I visited Edinburgh, Scotland, I’ve been obsessed with mussels.

Let me explain…

We went to London for a friend’s wedding, and spent some time in Paris and Edinburgh while we were there. Another friend, Hailey, recommended a restaurant called The Mussel Inn, on Rose Street in Edinburgh. After a week of culinary bad decisions (and no, I’m not talking about the haggis), we decided to check out The Mussel Inn on our last night.

The Mussel Inn is a restaurant that – surprise, surprise – specializes in mussels. They are cooked and served in all kinds of sauces. I can’t remember exactly what sauce we chose, but I know it had leeks and cream. They were the best mussels I’ve ever had. I used to think that mussels were filler shellfish – thrown in with the steamer clams in a clambake to make it look like more food, when in fact they were subbing the good stuff for the cheap stuff.

I still think that kind of a little, but The Mussel Inn did a lot to significantly alter that perception. I became a mussel convert.

And I have been trying in vain to replicate those mussels ever since. Tonight I came pretty close.

Instead of trying to make up my own recipe and being disappointed each time, I opted to open up one of my many cookbooks and follow a recipe. This one was mussels steamed in white wine and finished with a cream and fresh herb sauce.

The ingredients were pretty standard for a dish like this (not that I ever got them right before) – butter, shallots, garlic, white wine, and of course, mussels. Once the mussels were cooked, the steaming liquid was joined with some heavy cream, lemon juice, fresh tarragon and fresh parsley.

I did everything by the book. The cookbook, that is. Well, I did make one change. Instead of plain old butter, I used a garlic herb Irish butter I bought to have with lobster the other night. (I guess it’s been a shellfish weekend.) I even followed my own advice and prepped my mise en place before I even thought of turning on the stove.

I carefully tended to my mussels. They were rinsed, debearded, and individually scrubbed. The parsley was thoroughly washed and dried to get rid of the tell-tale grit that is always present. Shallots, garlic and herbs were minced. Wine and cream were measured out. Lemon juice was freshly squeezed. I even dug out my lazy susan, and used it for a mise en place tray, with the ingredients arranged in order, clock-wise, with the first needed ingredient in the 3:00 position to the left of the stove.

Yup, I can’t be stopped. I’m organized and prepared, and a total loser.

My only problem was keeping the heat at the right level and managing the difference between a simmer and a boil. I think I reduced my steaming liquid too much because I couldn’t get that boil down to a simmer like I was supposed to. But you know what? It didn’t really matter. (I bought more mussels thanI could eat anyway, so I still had plenty of sauce.)

I even had some crusty Italian bread, topped with that delicious garlic herb butter, ready for the broiler so I could semi-gracefully sop up the sauce from the bottom of my bowl.

Aside from the fact that I was probably a little low on sauce for the full recipe, and no matter how much I scrubbed those mussels I don’t think I got them completely clean, the dish was a success! The mussels were perfectly steamed and the sauce was delicious. And the mise en place made the process, and clean up, a breeze. (I will be taking my own advice from here on out. Well, I have the best intentions of doing so anyway.)

Okay, I did leave the bread under the broiler a little too long and the edges got burned, but no one is perfect, so give me a break.