Making Mussels

 

Yep I did it, I prepared Mussels this week for challenge 2 of my Fortnightly Fish Challenge! I had a great recipe from the Countdown website...Spicy Mussels, all I needed to buy was the Mussels I had everything else in the cupboards already, my kinda recipe!
 Lovely Hubby and I picked out our select few from the Little Mussel Shower in our local Pack 'n' Save.  Actually I got Lovely Hubby to do it because I was terrified of breaking the machine or dropping them or doing something stupid!  Great that he did it but it meant I didn't take much notice of what they looked like close up.  So when I chatted to my fish expert Mummysknee on Skype about what I was doing with them and she asked me if they were de-bearded I had no idea what she was talking about!  I'm not a researcher you see, I am a fly by the seat of your pants, blagger kind of chap.  I had no idea about Mussels and their preparation, whereas most folk would have done a bit of research beforehand I was banking on a bit of google assistance and/or Lovely Hubby's odd 'general' knowledge of all things to do with films and food.

  

After learning what this beard business was I was slightly worried when I looked at my catch and found out that they were fully bearded.  Its OK though Lovely Hubby knew exactly what to do (really don't know how or why he knows but he does) so we got down to a bit of de-bearding and scrubbing together. 

Next step was cooking the beast (*sob* I had to use wine for this part!!!).  I was able to send Lovely Hubby away to put his feet up for this as my other assistant the Countdown website was able to help me with this part.  I was prepared to chuck out half of them due to unopening etc but they all survived!!  Clever me/Mussels!  Here we have on the right the cooked creatures...  

All that I needed to do now was reduce down the tomato base (prepared by my fair hand earlier in the day) with the wine and pour over the Mussels and voila below we have the finished product...

The presentation was a bit iffy!  My apologies!  I had a couple of wines (glasses that is not bottles) so by the serving up stage I was past caring!  To me anywho it looked yummy.  I love Mussels, I thought Lovely Hubby did too!  I knew Lil Sis didn't she shipped out for the night.  I thought maybe Mr Nature, fisherman etc Lil Sis' Boyf might like one but he doesn't like eating them but he loves diving for them.  Hmm note to self if he doesn't like eating them maybe I can eat what he collects.
So I'm all chuffed with myself for preparing this lovely dish, some nice hot buttery bread to accompany the Mussels and mop up the sauce.
Well what can I say.  One Mussel and Lovely Hubby pushed his plate away and declared 'yeah I didn't think I liked Mussels'.  Needless to say I wasn't amused!  But on the bright side I got 14 Mussels all to myself and they were A.W.E.S.O.M.E!