The mussels starting to open up, with the sauce bubbling underneath.
Plated for dinner, right after cooking. Very good flavor and fun to eat.
Leftover lunch the next day. Removed the mussels from the shells, threw in the leftover baked asparagus and liked it just as well as last night's dinner. The sauce soaked into the pasta....yummmm.
Lessons learned from this recipe:
1. Leave yourself plenty of time to clean and debeard the mussels.
2. Keep mussels in enough ice water while said cleaning and debearding is going on. I lost a few that didn't get submerged enough during this process, so had to pitch them.
3. If using an enameled cast iron dutch oven, cook the mussels longer. I didn't take into account the extra time to raise the temperature high enough to get the mussels to open up in the time allotted. Plus stirring to check the bottom layer of mussels is a really good idea. I ended up pitching some mussles that didn't open during cooking, but it's probably because I didn't cook them long enough. But with mussels, better to be safe than sorry.
Yes, I would make this recipe again. Yummy and healthy. To see what others' did with the recipe this week, visit French Fridays with Dorie.
These were good, weren't they? I think I liked it better the second day when I didn't have to deal with all the shells :-)
ReplyDeleteI love that you were able to adjust this to fit everyones eating preferences. We didn't have leftovers to try a second day, and wish we had - sounds like they were even better the next day.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how many ways you can serve one meal to satisfy family, isn't it? That happens
ReplyDeletea lot in our family too. All the grandchildren started out wanting only butter and grated
cheese on pasta, and as they grew older, they found out there is so much more out there.
Your dish turned out well, Tricia and I both enjoyed ours, even if we each made a different
version.
I agree with Cher. I liked the leftovers even better because they were already out of the shell and so easy to eat. Glad that this could be tailored for everyone in your family's tastes. Yum!
ReplyDeleteMussel shell castanets are fun! While de-shelling the ones we had with pasta the next day, I couldn't help but keep popping a few in my mouth. I loved this recipe that much.
ReplyDelete