Show Me Your Mussels

Tags

mussel dishes, mussels, mussels and garlic tomato, mussels and sourdough bread

With only days away from paradise (aka Bahamas), I’ve got seafood on the brain. Coincidentally, my friend Jamie did too! We decided to stay in this past Saturday and make a shellfish dinner.

Forget the loud clubs, expensive drinks and creepy guys. I’d rather spend my Saturday night with these mussels:

Picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussel

Instead of these muscles:

picture from http://creationwiki.org/Muscular_system

It was a night in full of girl talk, cooking, and wine. Jamie pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay which happened to be called “Sweet Bitch”. How appropriate for our girl night. This wine was deliciously sweet and took every bit of will power we had not to drink the whole bottle before dinner.

Tomato Garlic Mussels

Ingredients:

1lb of mussels (clean and debearded)

The seafood department may debeard the mussels for you. If not, check out how to here.

1tbs of olive oil

1/2 cup of chopped basil

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 can of crushed tomatos

1 fresh tomato chopped

2 table spoons of butter

1/2 cup of dry white wine

salt and pepper to taste

First of all, throw out any mussels that are already open. Mussels should be shut when not cooked and opened after they are cooked.

Mussels are not always supplied at your local grocery store. Unless you are close to the beach, you may need to talk to the seafood department and pre-order a batch.

Heat oil in large sauce pan.

Pour in your can of crushed tomatos, fresh tomato, basil, garlic, butter, and wine. Let simmer on the stove over medium heat.

Next, place your mussels in the pan and cover.

After about 5-8 mins check on your mussels and see if they are opened. Mussels that are not open should be discarded and not eaten.

Pour in a bowl and ready to serve.

We served our garlic mussels and tomatos in a bowl and dipped toasted sourdough bread in the sauce. However, this dish would be great on top of angel hair pasta!