Mussels with Wine & Cream Sauce: Mouclade: Lesson 6 : Part 2 : LCB at Home

Yesterday I failed in an attempt to put all three reports/recipes into a single post. The fun continues today. Perhaps it was just not meant to be.

Second part of the menu was the main course - the Mussels. The recipe recommended 3 pounds [1,5 kilos] for 6 persons - which was considered laughable; thus, for 6 persons, 4 kilos were acquired [8,75#]. The people were, evidently, hungry.

Called "Mouclade" (moules = mussels in French; you can see the root of one word in the other), it's done with a cream-based sauce and served on the half shell.

What I did was:

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Mouclade : Mussels with Wine and Cream Sauce

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• Lots of mussels
  
  
• oil, olive
• onion, bruinoise, [chopped fine]
• shallot, bruinoise
• dry white wine
• parsley, chopped (maybe dried)
  
• pepper
  
  
• crème fraiche
• thyme, dried
• pepper
  
• parsley

Procedure

1. Clean the mussels
   • de-beard, rinse in several changes of water, toss out the broken or gaping open ones
2. sauté onions and shallots in oil - until tender (medium low heat - be patient)
3. add a half a cup or so of white wine - have a sip yourself (quality control)
4. add a tablespoon of parsley
5. add the mussels, cover (it ought to be steamy in there)
6. toss/shake the pot every couple of minutes
7. until they open up (maybe 5-8 minutes)
8. That's it for the mussels - cooked
   • remove from the pot/s with a slotted spoon or something similar; leaving behind the liquid and much, but not all, of the onions/shallots mixture. Leave them uncovered, to cool
9. Now the sauce:
   1. Leave the liquid stand in the pot for two minutes
   2. Strain the liquid, letting the onions catch and filter the sand that inevitably has collected in the bottom
   3. Let this sit for two minutes and pour into a saucepan (leaving behind, again, that last little trace of sand)
   4. Reduce by a quarter - concentrating flavor
   5. Whisk in the crème fraiche; slowly at first
   6. Reduce by a third to concentrate the flavor more and get it a bit saucy - boiling
   7. Add 1/4 teaspoon of freshly dried thyme (from your garden at the end of last season)
   8. Season with pepper
10. Open the cooled mussels, remove one half of the shell, and lay out on a platter
    • Discard any that aren't open. No point is getting frugal, and sick, over one bad mussel.
11. Pour the sauce over the mussels (it warms them back up) and sprinkle with more parsley, for color

Done

Notes

1. Do not season mussel dishes with salt; use pepper only; they're salty enough, as a rule.
2. I did it in two pots due to the huge volume of mussels
3. Boiling the cream in crème fraiche will not cause it to curdle - that's the surprise about crème fraiche. Normal cream often will curdle if boiled.

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Okay, that takes care of the "mussels" post. Only the Bavarois left to do.

I'm not entirely satisfied with style of the headings here but that's the default in the Blogger templates. I must do something about that someday; to make these posts more attractive.

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