Snow. Mussels. Music. Baby.
Meandering through the doors of the grocery store last week, I brushed snow flakes off my jacket, sidestepped the display of chips in the entrance (sidenote: Chips? Why do stores not capitalize on snowy days and serve samples of soup?), and started trolling for inspiration on an unusually wintry day.
Idly thinking about the students fresh from January term or a long winter break traipsing around campus, I suddenly grimaced, remembering the many male undergraduates that seemingly decided to launch ill-conceived facial hair growth campaigns this semester. Passing the herbs, I snagged often-elusive chervil, which always leads to placing a Sancerre in the wine chiller on the way to collect mussels in the seafood area. (Another sidenote: Remember not to package mussels in plastic—they need to breathe.)
Before Tracy Morgan, before Biz Markie, MP dropped “in every job that must be done/ there is an element of fun/ you find the fun/ and…snap! the job’s a game.” Yes, though the lyric was accompanied with the coordinating finger motion and the diss index is rather low, Mary Poppins was getting the job done in the 1964 movie (Mr. Banks did straighten up and learn to love his suffragette wife Winifred before MP flew right). The fun part of mussel prep: debearding.
(Yet another sidenote: “Debearding” is a splendid verb. In perhaps The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) or Gilbert & Sullivanish usage: “Debeard thyself! And unhand the lady.”)
First, the mussels need to be covered with very cold water in a bowl (or the sink, if you like) for five minutes so they will, ah, snap their shells together. Expect to discard at least a quarter of every pound to damaged shells and dead or dehydrated shells that do not close. Some of the remaining little guys may have “beards” (remnants of the piling that the mussel was cultivated on) sticking out of the shell.
Mussels are filter feeders, condemned by some as lowliest of low seafood—and I would certainly second Anthony Bourdain’s reservations about ordering them at a restaurant (where they are often stored improperly). For the same reasons, though, (low cost, ease of prep, and short cooking time) mussels make excellent lunches. The shells need a good scrub and a very satisfying tug with the hand not holding the mussel, wriggling the beard back and forth until the mussel releases the byssal threads.
Then, the mussels go into a wine broth that has simmered shallots and garlic for five minutes on medium-high; a 1:1:1 ratio works well: 1 chopped garlic clove + 1 chopped shallot + 1 cup of wine per 1 pound of mussels.
After adding the mussels, cover the pan, turn the heat down to medium, and let the mussels shells steam open for five minutes. Meanwhile, chop a quarter of a cup of chervil (sub parsley if necessary) to add to the opened mussels with two tablespoons of butter. Season to taste. Serve with a discard bowl for shells, at least half a baguette per person, and the rest of the wine.
Underneath the off-putting, hairy exterior, these scrubs, hanging out the passenger side of a glazed bowl wide, trying to—well, I ain’t no hollaback girl, but until I begin leading “UnFugYourself Cville” seminars at the new community space mod, debearding’ll have to do.
Outside, I looked up at the fat flakes falling, closed my eyes, opened my mouth.
And just like when I was five, catching little bits of ice felt sort of lame. I could do better. Rising with my red hair, I took the bowl of mussels and began to eat them like air.
Bitingly,
Lady Lazarus
p.s. Here’s to wishing that pesky shadow of Phil’s doesn’t show in Punxsutawney tomorrow.
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Posted Thursday, February 1st, 2007, 1:04 am | Filed in Design, Food. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Impressive use of TLC! Perhaps we should start calling mussels “busters.”
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:28 am
As someone who has prepared several thousand mussels back when I worked in an Italian restaurant (debarnacle-ing as well as debearding), I can third, fourth and fifth your seconding of Bourdain’s reservations about ordering them at a restaurant. Often compounded in large, dirty buckets of tepid water where they stew with their rotting peers, I wouldn’t recommend it. But yours look deliciously prepared, especially as captured in your uniformly delicious photography and within the iridescent casings of Kthread.
February 3rd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
speaking of ill-conceived facial hair, I can only hope that Blake reads this most passive aggressive attempt to tell him that it just looks silly.
February 3rd, 2007 at 4:59 pm
also, Anthony Bourdain is my hero. I have nothing relevant to add, really.
February 12th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Regarding poorly chosen facial hair: a group of friends and I decided back in college that if any one of us ever gained real power in our society, we would lobby for a “Hair Regulation Act” in which one must propose the desired look to a board of aesthetically minded judges for approval for adopting it. It’s too bad - I’m in art history, and the other two are in the humanities as well, so the chances of this ever happening are quite slim. It pains me to think of all those attractive men hidden behind chin caterpillars and scraggly moustaches.
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Impressive writing. Wondered if you were my elusive cousin.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Hmm, Steve, you did find this blog, so now we are connected through digital lines—
It’s funny to read over this post today, at the height of summer. Mussels are out of season until it is colder; crabs and shrimp are beautiful right now, though. Scallops in my next post…