Posts filed under 'mussels'
This is the 50th week of Presto Pasta Roundup and I promised come hell or high water I would provide a pasta this time. Here is one of the best. It is a traditional recipe and not one of my own, but I’m proud to present it because it isn’t even well known around Italy and it is way too good to miss.
Those are mussels growing in a mussel farm in Australia. Farming mussels has made them available in places that never heard of them 60 years ago. Places where it is too hot to ship them, too cold for nature to grow them, with farming can provide them to almost everybody these days. The farmed mussels are a lot cleaner and easier to prepare than the wild ones I once knew. It really has made mussels a busy day choice, because they are cooked in a flash.
That’s what they look like raw. All you have to do is wash them under running cool water and tear off any “beard” that’s clinging, which resembles Spanish Moss. It’s how the mussel attaches himself to things. Throw away any that are lying there open and don’t close when touched. Those aren’t good. Once they are cleaned they need to be cooked quickly, because the cleaning process is the last thing you do before preparing them. Recipe follows the jump
In a big pot melt 2 ounces of butter and sauté in it a few halved cloves of garlic. Add about 1/2 cup or so of white wine. Toss in the mussels, heat on high, pop on a lid and cook until they open. It doesn’t take long, so keep an eye in them.
You can either proceed with 1) eating 2) preparing a dish or 3) storing them immediately. To store, remove them from their shells, throwing away any that are shut, because those also aren’t good. Put them into a container with the cooking juices and cover well, then refrigerate them.
These are fagioli or beans as imaged by Ciccio, a great blog. If yours look like that, pick out the white ones, soak and then cook them, because we want canellini.
These are cavatelli, a Pugliese pasta used in this dish. 
or use gnocchetti sardi which are almost exactly the same thing 
or even casariccia. 
I think I am getting carried away with the possibilities at IndustryPlayer!
To serve 6 lucky eaters you will need:
1.5 kilos or 3 pounds of mussels cleaned and cooked as above
.5 kilo or 1 pound of cooked white beans
2 cloves of garlic
7 to 8 tablespoons of great olive oil
1 peperoncino, or small dried chili pepper, crushed
5 or 6 cherry tomatoes, halved
salt and pepper to taste
600 grams or 18 ounces of dry pasta
Heat a big pot of water to boiling, add a very large 4 finger pinch of salt and the pasta. Note the time and the time the package says to cook your pasta.
Heat a wide frying pan with the oil, then add the garlic cloves. Sauté for a bit but do not brown the garlic as it is there to scent the oil. Add the beans and the cherry tomatoes, stirring around, then just before the pasta will be done, add the mussels with their cooking liquor, with a few shells for atmosphere.
Taste for seasoning and correct. I do not think you will need salt. You do NOT eat cheese on this pasta. (I know that makes some of you immediately want to have cheese on it and say, “So there!” Don’t.
This is how they were served to Luchena in Puglia.
I think this is one of the great dishes of Italy. You need the best ingredients you can find because there are so few of them and each must star. The first time I ever tasted it I screamed or fainted or did something embarrassing that I’ve forgotten. “This is the ONE!” came into it somehow.
February 28th, 2008
I am learning to use the new camera. Once I figure out what all the settings are, I should produce better photos, but this camera has possibilities the 10 year old one never dreamed of, and there’s definitely a learning curve. So yesterday I decided to make a very simple pasta and use the camera to illustrate the process while also exploring what I’ve read on the blogs of much better photographers than I.
The pasta is almost “aglio e olio” which is almost as simple as it gets with pasta. The only ones I can think of that are simpler is with just butter or with just oil.
These are the ingredients I used with the pasta.
I bought those cherry peppers to see how hot they were. Barb and I were discussing this only last week. The answer is pretty hot, but not atomic. I used half of one for one serving and it was pleasantly piquant for me, and maybe too hot for most Umbrians. The cherry tomatoes are from a Puglian vendor and are just as sugary sweet as I recall them being in Puglia. That could be a problem in some dishes, but it won’t be in this one. The photo was taken outside in full sun. Most good photographers recommend that, and I love the shadows and the flooding light. I wouldn’t love my pasta so much if it had to go outside before eating it.
I heated the water to boiling, salted it and put the penne in to cook before I started the sauce. The penne I used are from Gragnano, which is a word you should look for. It’s a place where they still do dried pasta the traditional way, and it doesn’t cost more. It actually costs less than better-known pastas. It takes up to 10 minutes (they say) to cook penne, but I think between 8 and 9. That’s how long it will take to make the sauce.
I heated the frying pan and added good olive oil, then the minced half of the cherry pepper and about 1/4 teaspoon of salt to sauté for a few minutes. I then added one minced clove of garlic and a ladle full of the pasta water, which is about 1/2 cup. Five minutes into the cooking of the pasta, I added cherry tomatoes which I had halved or quartered, depending on the size, and this is what it looked like at that point. Note that I see the steam, but the lens isn’t steaming up. I wonder if that is because it is so much smaller than the previous lens?
Once the pasta was done to my decidedly al dente taste, I drained it and quickly added it to the simmering sauce, plated it and put a little aged, grated Pecorino on it. I later added more, but I didn’t take the chance that it wouldn’t taste right and my pasta would already be covered in it. There are many things I will do for this blog but eating really bad food is not one of them.
That’s the least successful of all the photos. I haven’t yet really got a handle on doing close-up shots yet and the part that is in focus is in the middle of the plate while the leading edge is out of focus. I bought this camera largely for it’s superior ability to deliver macro photography, so obviously I need to read that part of the manual a few more times.
But the pasta was good, maybe even great. I could have eaten the same bowl twice, as a matter of fact. As they always say, the first law of Italian cookery is to choose the ingredients right and to respect them. It turns out that cherry peppers and very sweet cherry tomatoes make pleasant companions in the mouth.
It would also work to toss in some cooked white beans toward the end. What I’ve made here is the beginning of many Puglian pastas, to which are added the vegetables and fish which are the important things in the Puglian kitchen. This spiced oil would end up with beans and mussels to make the single best thing I ate last Spring in Puglia. I am going to offer this to Ruth for Presto Pasta Night, but shan’t be hurt if she turns it down, because it is just as much about a camera as it is about pasta.
I need to go back. To Puglia
The next day: Today I did the same thing only added beans instead of pasta. That was yummers!
So then I wandered over to Olga’s to talk about what an Umbrian would do with these peppers, and there were all the roofers taking coffee in her kitchen. They all had chili stories!
When they left, Olga and I decided to see where the heat is. We slivered off first flesh, nope. Then seeds, nope. I found it in the membranes and had to be stuffed with bread because I was ON FIRE!
September 17th, 2007
Ingredienti per 4 persone: ingredients for 4 people
-1,5 Kg. di Cozze 3 pounds of mussels
-200 gr. di pomodori tipo perini 7 ounces of peeled pear tomatoes
-50 gr. di olio extra vergine di oliva 1.75 oz extra virgin olive oil
-un bicchiere di vino bianco secco 3.5 oz. Dry white wine
-una costa di sedano one leg of celery
-una carota one carrot
-3 spicchi d’aglio 3 cloves garlic
-una cipolla one onion
-prezzemolo parsley
-un peperoncino a chili pepper
-pepe nero black pepper
-8 fette di pane casereccio del giorno prima 8 slices of rustic bread (if not using pasta)
PREPARAZIONE
Pulite e raschiate le cozze delle incrostazioni sotto l’acqua corrente, riponendole in un contenitore. Quando avrete finito, riempitelo d’acqua pulita e aiutandovi con un cucchiaio di legno, agitate le cozze nel contenitore per qualche minuto, quindi buttate l’acqua e ripetete l’operazione. Lasciatele a scolare. Bollite i pomodori in abbondante acqua salata, scolateli e spellateli. Tagliateli a pezzettini e tenete da parte. Pulite e mondate tutte le verdure, l’aglio e la cipolla. Fate un trito di finezza media e versate in una padella dove avrete fatto scaldare l’olio. Fate appassire a fiamma bassa. Versate ora le cozze nel tegame, coperchiando immediatamente. Dopo un minuto, rimestate le cozze e bagnate con il vino bianco. Ricoprite con il coperchio e aspettate che tutte le cozze siano aperte. Aggiungete i pomodori e il peperoncino intero. Proseguite la cottura, mescolando spesso, per circa 3 minuti. Nel frattempo tostate in forno le fette di pane. A fine cottura delle cozze, eliminate il peperoncino, versate le cozze in un piatto da portata e cospargetele di prezzemolo tritato e di un’abbondante macinata di pepe nero. Guarnite con le fette di pane, irrorate di un filo di olio extra vergine di oliva.
VINO CONSIGLIATO: Un bianco tipo Martina oppure un Rosato del Salento.
Clean the mussels of their beards and any loose incrustations under running water, then put them into a pot. Throw out any that are opened. When they are all cleaned, fill the pot with cold water and stir them with a wooden spoon for a few minutes. Then drain off that water and refill the pot and do it again. Pour them into a strainer and let them drain This is to get rid of sand, so if you buy cultured/farmed mussels, you may not need to do this.
Use boiling hot water to loosen the tomato peels, and then peel them. Cut them into small pieces.
Clean and peel as needed all the vegetables. Chop the vegetables medium finely—a food processor will do if you pulse it. Heat the oil in a very large pan and turn the chopped vegetables into it over a low flame. Allow to soften, but do not brown. Turn the mussels into that pot and immediately cover them. After a minute, uncover and stir the mussels and add the white wine. Recover the pot and continue to cook until all the mussels are opened. Add the tomato pieces and the whole chili and continue to cook it for about 3 minutes.
In the meantime, cook the pasta or toast/grill the slices of bread. At the end of the cooking of the mussels, remove the chili pepper and turn the mussels into a large serving bowl—which contains the cooked pasta if you are using it—then scatter chopped parsley over it and then grind abundant quantities of black pepper over it all. It takes lots and lots of pepper– more than you think is wise. There should be the perfume of pepper and a definite taste of pepper to be right.
If you do not use pasta, garnish the bowl of mussels with the slices of grilled bread which have been drizzled with great olive oil.
The wine suggested with this dish is a white similar to Martina or a rosé of Salento. We drank the rosé and it was terrific! Crisp and dry with a spicy, berryish nose and pretty, too.
August 30th, 2007
