Few seafood products offer such a satisfying taste-price ratio as mussels. These little wonders are usually very reasonably priced, they are easy to cook and you don't need to be a genius in the kitchen to produce a fantastic dish.
The only problem that mussels really is the cleaning - removing the barnacles, pulling the hairy beards off and scraping away any debris that may be attached to the shells. However, there are some supermarkets that do sell them already cleaned such as Consum. The important thing is to clean them and discard the broken shells.
If the previous step puts you off, but you still love these molluscs, get someone else to do it!
Tell them to watch this video!
This recipe calls for something slightly different, we will be serving them with a sundried tomato and lemon vinaigrette -the mussels already have a lot of flavours- so we are just complimenting them with a little lemon juice, a citrus fruit that goes really well with seafood, and few extras to jazz things up a little. If you want to make it a complete dish, serve the mussels without the shells, add a little more hazelnuts to the sauce and put it all on a platter with 80 g of cooked spaghetti per person or some french fries and a salad.
So, what do we have to do?
Ingredients
For 4 people
1kg of mussels or clochinas
For the vinaigrette
100 g of sundried tomatoes in oil
60 g of hazelnuts
75 ml of extra virgin olive oil
Lemon juice and zest to taste (I use 4 tablespoons of juice and ½ zest) - this replaces the vinegar in the 'vinaigrette'
1 clove of garlic (or more or less, to taste)
Chilli to taste (fresh or dry)
Chive
Salt
Preparation:
Finely chop the dried tomatoes in oil. In a mortar or food processor, put the garlic clove and the chopped chilli and the hazelnuts. Blend everything until the garlic is very finely chopped or barely visible. But we still want some slightly larger pieces of hazelnut left to give it some texture. It doesn't need to be a completely smooth paste.
Add the lemon juice, salt to taste - but be careful as some sundried tomatoes are already quite salty - and then pour in the olive oil little by little, stirring so that it emulsifies slightly.
Steam the mussels in a pan with a little olive oil and then pour them into a colander. Remove one half of the shell from each mussel and serve with the vinaigrette poured on top and a sprinkle of chopped chives.
Enjoy!