Mussels

We went grocery shopping late and upon returning home, I decided after smelling the soup I was making, that it did not go with my mussel dish. We had the mussels and the soup is stored for later.


I made Beer-Steamed Mussels with Salted Black Beans from Williams Sonoma’s Eat Well Cookbook. In our market, mussels come in 2# packages so I doubled the recipe. The recipe says 2 main or 4 starter servings. So four main is just what I need with Jim. I would describe this dish as piquant and hot. It is definitely different from Moules Mariniere as we experienced in Brussels. Jim really liked this dish. I hope he also likes Chinese lager beer (Tsingtao) as we had to buy a six pack for the bottle to do the dish.

Mussels, 1#

Red Fresno chilies-2-3 (They were called red cherry peppers in our market. There is a picture in the cookbook so I knew they were the same)

Chinese salted black beans, 1 ½ T

Peanut Oil, 1T

Fresh ginger, 1T minced

Garlic, 2 cloves minced

Chinese lager-style beer, 1C

Lime juice, 2T

Salt

Cilantro sprigs for garnish

Heat the oil in a sauté pan with a tight fitting lid. Add the ginger and garlic, cook stirring for a minute, Add chilies and black beans stir for another minute. Add the beer and the mussels and cover the pan. Cook for 4-8 minutes shaking the pan occasionally. Mine took about 6 minutes. Stir in the lime juice and salt. Top with cilantro sprigs. I served this with the Cinco de Mayo bread that I gave you the recipe earlier.

I brought the mussels home on ice. Before cooking I scrubbed the mussels and put in ice water with a little corn meal. They will eat it and expel the beards. These were exceptionally clean mussels.

Jim served a 2008 Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, NZ. If we had cooled the Chinese beer, we could have served that.