This is lifted directly from a River Cottage Every Day recipe. I love Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's stuff: they're generally tasty, simple recipes using fresh, local ingredients. I like his ethos of ethical food too, and it's well worth watching his Chicken Run and Fish Fight campaigns. They're all available on 4OD.
Once the heat's on, this all cooks really quickly so it's important to get everything prepped before you light the gas. First thing is to sort out the mussels - it's a bit time consuming but quite easy. Assuming they've come in a string bag, as they tend to, give them a first quick rinse under the cold tap. Then open the string bag and empty them into a big bowl. Each mussel needs preparing individually, so you'll need a second big bowl to put the prepared ones in. Rinse each mussel to get rid of any sand or grit, pull off the beard (a short sharp tug will do it), and check that each one is alive. If it's firmly closed, it's fine. If it's open, give it a couple of firm taps on the work surface and it should slowly close.
These came from Waitrose, and they were in really good nick - I had to discard two broken ones, but the rest were all alive and quite clean to begin with.
Next, chop up a bunch of spring onions, a clove of garlic and two slices of pancetta. Smoky pancetta is an expensive luxury, so feel free to substitute streaky bacon or lardons if you want.
We're ready to go! Heat a knob of butter and a glug of veg oil in a large pan. When the butter starts to bubble, add the pancetta and fry it for a minute or so. Then add the spring onions and garlic and swirl it all around for another minute.
Add half a pint of cider. At this point, Hugh says to put the lid on and boil for a minute, so I did. I was quite surprised when I took the lid off and was met with a pretty blue flame as the alcohol burned off. It's a quite legitimate cooking technique to flame the alcohol, but I've never done it before and I didn't intend my first time to be accidental! It might be safer to leave the lid off and boil it for a minute, to let the alcohol boil away rather than flame.
Either way, next add the mussels to the pan, put the lid on and let them cook for a minute or two - literally a minute or two, they don't need any longer! Then add a heaped teaspoonful of wholegrain mustard (or whatever mustard you have in the fridge) and three or four tablespoonfuls of cream and mix them all around. It should be finished with chopped fresh parsley, but I'm not a big parsley fan so I left it off.
Serve with crusty bread to mop the sauce up with.
Taste verdict
This is one of those really simple dishes that just lets quality ingredients shine through. The mussels were excellent, and the sauce was really smooth and tasty. I wanted more bread to soak up the sauce with! Bacon and shellfish are naturally salty, so it doesn't really need any seasoning. I think we'll be having variations on this all through the season!
Financial verdict
1kg mussels - £2.49
Bunch of salad onions - 75p
Bottle of cider - £1.90
Tub of cream - 79p
2 thick slices pancetta - £1.85
2 crusty rolls - 64p
Clove of garlic, spoonful of wholegrain mustard - pennies, from store
£4.21 per person. This is a luxury one, not a value one! You could make a big difference to those figures by using streaky bacon instead of pancetta, and just serving with sliced bread instead of those tasty rolls.
The skinny
Clean the mussels, remove the beards and discard any dead ones.
Peel and chop a clove of garlic and a bunch of salad onions.
Cut up two slices of pancetta (or streaky bacon, or use lardons).
Heat a knob of butter and some veg oil in a large pan.
Add the pancetta and fry for a minute or two.
Add the garlic and salad onions and fry for another minute.
Add half a pint of cider and boil for a minute.
Add the mussels, put the lid on and boil them for 1-2 minutes - no more!
Add three tablespoonfuls of cream and a large teaspoonful of mustard. Mix it all in.
Serve with crusty bread.
WeightWatchers ProPoints
15 (plus the bread!)
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