Gather Round the Table: Mussels

Gather ‘Round the Table
Chef Kurt Michael Friese
17 February 2007
Mussels

When eminent food historian and author Waverly Root published his seminal book Food: An Authoritative and Visual History and Dictionary of the Foods of the World in 1980, he had this to say about mussels:

“The mussel occurs on both sides of the Atlantic and is the same mussel, mytilus edulis, but the Europeans eat it and the Americans don’t.”

Not so anymore.  The American culinary revolution that began in the 1960’s (indeed, has its roots in the 1930’s – see Patrick Kuh’s The Last Days of Haute Cuisine), hit its stride in the 1980’s right after the publication of Root’s book.  Until then, the mussel was little more than an annoyance to sailors and a source of free bait to dockside fishermen.  As American tastes began to evolve away from Depression-inspired meat-and-potatoes cuisine and become a bit more adventurous, the lowly mussel was one of the many foods to which we opened our minds and mouths.

For clarity, we should examine where the mussel resides in the pantheon of shellfish. The common vernacular often refers to a wide variety of animals as “shellfish.”  While in one sense that’s perfectly accurate, because they do all live in shells, it is often helpful to classify them a little more specifically since after all we want to eat them and therefore in most (but not all) cases cook them, so knowing what they are and how they will react to different methods is important.

First consider the mollusk, which is a broad category of animals that live in shells, but some live in single shells, like the snail and the nautilus, while others live in 2 shells that are hinged together.  The former is usually cooked outside the shell, while the latter, the bivalves (clams, oysters and mussels to name a few) are usually cooked in their shells.  An exception here would be the scallop, which is one of the few bivalves of which only part is usually eaten – the tasty white adductor muscle, which it uses to open and close its shell and thereby move about the sea floor.

Then there are the crustaceans, which can be cooked in or out of the shell, and include shrimp, crayfish (a.k.a. crawdads), langoustines, lobsters, and crabs.  One form of crab, known popularly as the softshell crab, is actually a blue crab that is molting, shedding one shell for a new one.  This happens only for a couple weeks in the spring for the popular “softies” of the Eastern United States.  Another very popular one is the king crab, and many men lose their lives every year fishing for them in the dangerous waters off Alaska.

Shrimp and prawns are indeed the same things, to settle a seemingly never-ending debate, but while langoustines, shrimp and crayfish may seem like they are all the same kind of animal, they are not.  Perhaps the most fascinating is the lobster, which can sometimes live 250 years or more, and while they are not very tasty at that point, it is interesting to think that there are still a few residents of New England that were around for the Boston Tea Party.

But back to the mussels.  While Root correctly pointed out that mussels live on both sides of the Atlantic, that is not their only home.  In fact, there are forms of mussels almost everywhere there is cold water.  Even here in my home state of Iowa there are freshwater mussels, which while tasty when young are chewy and nasty when old, and so were cultivated for years along the Mississippi not for their meat but for their shells, which were made into buttons.  One can still find thousands of shells along the banks of the river south of the Quad Cities with varying sizes of holes punched out of them, having been subsequently dumped back in the river.

Most of the mussels Americans eat today, at least those of us who don’t have the time, inclination, or proximity to harvest mussels themselves, are farmed mussels raised all along the east coast.  Most famously, they come from Prince Edward Island in Canada, where they have a huge mussel festival every fall

Mussels can be prepared in innumerable ways, stuffed and baked, breaded and fried, included in soups and stews, pasta dishes or paella.  The best way to truly enjoy the sweet succulence of a fresh mussel though is to steam it in its own juices, with perhaps a little white wine for aroma.

At Devotay, one of our most popular tapas is a slight variation on this: the mussels in white wine with La Quercia prosciutto and roasted peppers.  Make sure you serve it with plenty of crusty bread to sop up the luscious excess broth.

Devotay Mussels in White Wine

This recipe is scaled to be an appetizer for one, but can be doubled to be an entrée (or apps for two).  Much beyond that and you’ll want to make separate batches to avoid overcrowding your pan, which results in uneven cooking.

1 tablespoon olive oil
12-14 medium sized mussels, in the shell, washed and de-bearded*
1 clove garlic, sliced paper thin
2 tablespoons roasted red bell peppers, thin julienne
1 tablespoon flat parsley, chiffonade
2 tablespoons La Quercia prosciutto, julienned
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon butter
fresh cracked black pepper to taste

In a medium sized sauté pan with a tight fitting lid, heat the oil over a medium-high flame and add the mussels, garlic, peppers, parsley and prosciutto.  Toss to thoroughly coat, then cover and cook about 2 minutes, stirring at least once.  Add the white wine and cook a minute or two more, until the shells have opened and the mussels are tender. 

Remove the mussels, leaving the rest of the liquid in the pan.  Bring to a simmer, then add the butter, swirling to melt.  When the butter is melted, toss the liquid with the mussels and serve immediately.

*De-bearding means to remove the hair-like “beard” that often remains poking through the seam of the shell.  It’s what the mussel uses to attach itself to a rock or boat or rope or what-have-you.  It’s harmless, but distasteful.  To remove it, simply pinch it between your thumb and the flat side of a pairing knife and pull firmly.  A dry rag works well too to get a grip.  I found a nice pictorial lesson here.


Next Time: Memphis BBQ


Gather ‘Round the Table is a regular feature of Food.Gather.com.  Chef Kurt Michael Friese is the co-owner - with his wife Kim - of Devotay, a restaurant in Iowa City, serves on the Slow Food USA Board of Governors, and is Editor-in-Chief of the local food magazine Edible Iowa River Valley.  He lives in rural Johnson County.