Filet o' What?
Last night we made mussels in a reduction sauce of white wine, shallots, and garlic, served with a side of the first good artichokes of the season (steamed), a delicious "herb slab" (fancy code for bread), and some champagne (pink!). And then we sailed off into the sunset in our eighty-foot yacht. Or maybe we just ate off the coffee table during A Fish Called Wanda. Whatever.
It was our first time cooking mussels together, and only my second or third time eating them. The last was in a beachfront restaurant in Monterosso on my last trip to Italy, and the first was in a paella served up by the dorm chefs during my study abroad in Switzerland in 2000. The first time I ever saw anyone eating mussels was that same year, during a weekend in Paris. In a restaurant near Notre Dame, almost every table had a couple hunched over a theatrical black cauldron full of the shiny dark shells. Mussels, for me, have always been exotic and European, something to be reveled in as a luxury, something to be approached as an adventure. (It doesn't take much to impress me; remember, I'm the girl who will be dining out of a McDonald's bag at some point this week.)
We bought the mussels on a whim while shopping for sushi fish (which we ate on Saturday while watching Memoirs of a Geisha because every day is a theme party at our house). We knew the mussels needed to be eaten soon or they'd die (we had to cook them alive *gulp*), and in fact, we lost a handful of them in just the trip from the market to our house. (We think they suffocated in the plastic bag while we were watching the Jesus Parade.)
Once home, we threw out the deceased, washed the rest, and put them to bed inside the refrigerator under a nice, comfy, cool damp cloth. We couldn't make them that night (stuffed with Good Friday burritos), and we'd have to do the sushi the next night, so we penned it into our schedules to prepare the mussels on Easter Sunday, when the goodness of the Lord might also bless them to not make us sick even though we were playing with fire, where "fire" = "food poisoning." Come Sunday, though, there was a bbq with a bunny-shaped ice cream cake and pie and cookies and coffeecake--so much food that Simon had to sleep it off during a three-hour nap--so we didn't end up making the mussels until Monday night, thirty-six hours after we'd bought them, which also adds up to fanning the flames of murder-suicide by rancid shellfish.
What went from a good idea to an okay idea was quickly becoming a seriously iffy idea as we sorted through the lot and found that still more of our little bivalve molluscs had passed on, ceased to be, gone to meet their maker, joined the bleeding choir invisible. You can tell a late mussel by its open shell, but sometimes they're--at the risk of owing royalties to Monty Python for this paragraph--not quite dead yet, and so to test them, you knock on their shells and give them a squeeze to see if they close up (clam up?). Kind of neat, yes, but also tragic because, oh boy, they really are alive in there and on the verge of cruel death by delicious wine broth. Had I known just how much handling of the sealife needed to be done--the scraping of barnacles, the trimming of beards--I might have just bought an extra frozen pizza at the market instead. Still, I can't complain too much; as moving entrees go, these weren't too bad. No danger of them skittering across the table or joining hands to dance a reel at least.
While dealing with the ones en route to that big trash can in the sky, I couldn't help but peer inside, beyond the death gape of the shell, and notice that the meaty bit? It was...how should I say it? "Suggestive"? NSFW?
It looked like lady parts in there, okay?
It only got worse when they finished cooking. See for yourself.
VAGINA MUSSELS. (I took an even closer close-up, but the delicate sensibilities of my camera were so offended that this is what I ended up with.)
Let he or she who is not now giggling cast the first stone. I do have to say, though, that the above picture is much clearer than a similar one taken seven years ago of that Swiss paella. When I snapped that one, I was laughing so hard that you can barely make out the shapes of the people in the frame, much less the juicy, delicate folds of our meal. Clearly I have developed restraint and maturity since then. Or at least a steadier hand.
Now, I love a good laugh as much as the next guy, but yesterday wasn't the ideal time for it. One day post Linda LaRue's continuous-kegel crunchless abs and my entire midsection felt like it had been turned inside out and used as an "urban rebounder" (aka mini-tramp) for an elephant. It made for a confusing evening.
"Ow! My stomach hurts!"
"What's the matter?"
"Muscles!"
"Mussels?"
"No, muscles!"
"Do you think they were rotten? Did we keep them in the fridge too long?"
"No!"
"Wait...which mussels?
"Vagina muscles!"
"Vagina mussels?
"Yes, vagina muscles!"
It went on like that until Abbott and Costello had each rotated a full 360 in their graves.
More pics of our Easter weekend binge coming up on Flickr.
Geez, your camera is such a prude.
There's a fabulous French restaurant near our house that serves mussels by the metric assload (the assload is metric 'cuz, y'know, it's European and such). And there's really nothing that can make you feel better about gorging yourself on french fries than eating them alongside mussels and calling them pommes frittes.
I am TOTALLY giggling!
You've brought me out of lurkdom with that photo. It made my skin crawl. I have never scrolled down so fast. Dear God. But the totally-disgusting-and-blush-enducing photo aside, great post!
BTW, I'm also an editor and totally loved your post on the typesetter. So few people understand our pain.
This is the bad thing about blogs: people who start writing about the delicious things that they've been making. Therefore this weekend I'll be forced to make mussels with the white wine and shallot reduction. Gosh, Leah, why do you torture me so?
Oh, man, when I read about the continuous kegels, I was all, "Ooh, something I can do while futzing about the internet/ watching tv! Something that will help my abs!"
Yeah, ouch. Thanks Leah.
wow. that's the most amazing meal i've seen in awhile. our easter food totally pales in comparison.
I'm coming out of lurkdom as well to say/write "Thank you for the funny post." I needed a good laugh. I'm learning about sexy foods like mussels and geoducks through you. Mother nature definitely has a sense of humor. Also, Leah, that is a pretty photo of you. Great smile and dimples. You remind me of some Scandanavian people that I have met.
one of the greatest things about being in france is that i get to eat mussels... a lot. i love them. i love using one to get the others out. they make great tongs.
Oh Jeorg! I totally forgot about the shells-as-tongs technique! I was just going at them with my slimy little paws and making a huge mess of things. Next time I'll remember the technique of a true professional!
Mmm, I love mussels and very rarely get them, as fresh seafood in the Midwest? Not so much.
Although, I don't think I'll ever see them in quite the same way after that Georgia O'Keeffe-esque picture of yours.
And on a slight tangent, whenever I think of the word vagina, I always hear it in Julianne Moore's voice from the Big Lebowski. Is that strange?