Moules à la Marinière

Happy quatorze juillet!!! The 14th of July marks the French national holiday commemorating the storming of the Bastille, the state prison, which helped ignite the French Revolution. Fun fact: unlike the American Revolution which immediately resulted in a democracy, the French Revolution was followed by three emperors (on four separate occasions) and three kings (also on four separate occasions). All this to say that now the French eat mussels and fries to celebrate – at least those in Bretagne do, I haven’t been able to confirm that this is true for the rest of the country. When I studied abroad in Bretagne, I was introduced to this tradition in full force. I had moules frites, originally a Belgian dish, with my host family about three times during the week leading up to le quatorze juillet. That was fine with me as the coastal region was perfect for mussel eating. At one community event, the mussels were served in one of those red baskets you see here in the States and the fries were shoved in right alongside them. It made me a little less homesick for our county 4H fair food…

Ok, enough reminiscing about the past. Mussels are incredibly fast and easy to cook. The challenge is buying them fresh so they are still alive and clamped shut. The live creature must remain on ice or in fresh water and not be suffocated – not enclosed in a plastic bag. I found the single grocery store in town that carried mussels and went yesterday before the meal to purchase them, and the woman at the seafood counter was wonderfully helpful. The recipe called for 6 quarts of mussels, but when the employee did the calculations this came out to 11 pounds! We decided that the standard half pound per person would be sufficient and I decided to go on the generous side and ordered a little extra. Then, I went directly home and put these little guys on ice immediately. MAFC recommends that two hours before cooking the mussels they should be scrubbed, de-bearded, and soaked in water so that they will “disgorge their sand.” I think this step may be a bit superfluous in the age of fresh-water cultivation but I did it anyway. In fact, I went the extra mile and added flour to the water which is supposed to improve the disgorging process and feed the mussels so they become even fatter.

The current recipe is a simple combination of vermouth, shallots, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, and butter (halved). All of these ingredients go in a big pot until the alcohol boils. Then throw in the mussels, shake a few times, et voila! Five minutes later they are done. The mussels’ shells should open when cooked but the organism should not cook so long that it becomes tough. These cooked for just the right amount of time and were the perfect texture and the broth was perfectly seasoned.

 

Beautifully opened mussels strewn with sauce

I cheated a tad on the fries and just bought frozen ones from the store. I decided that, since there was no recipe for fries in MAFC, I was off the hook for making them from scratch. I compensated for this shortcut by making homemade mayonnaise (same word in French) for the fries, another loan from the Belgians.  Julia writes: “Mayonnaise like hollandaise is a process of forcing egg yolks to absorb a fatty substance, oil in this case, and to hold it in thick and creamy suspension.” I’ve seen cooks make mayonnaise before but have never tried it myself. The chapter on sauces describes it as one of the easiest sauces to make. It certainly seems easy, really just whisking olive oil into egg yolks with a dash of vinegar, salt, and mustard. The trick is that the oil must be added very slowly and the whisking must be continuous. After almost 15 minutes of hand beating this mixture, I had a very thick, small dollop of mayonnaise. Unfortunately, I found it rather bland and it just tasted like oil and egg yolk. MAFC has a number of variations on this recipe that include adding herbs and other greens such as pickles or capers to the mayonnaise. I may try to perk up this little yellow blob in the coming days but otherwise I have been disenchanted with the results.

 

The bright yellow sauce is the mayonnaise.
French style mustard is on the left and
Hienz Chili sauce is to the front.

My good friend Jacklyn brought a lovely white wine to pair with the seafood and it was very refreshing indeed! We were also joined by our classmate Shweta who brought some lovely little pastries and her almost three-year-old son, Veer. Both the dessert and the boy were very sweet! Veer refused to try the mussels even after I made chomping monster noises with them and his mother said they taste like chicken, but he was content to nibble on the fries. The grown-ups all seemed to agree that the mussels were delicious and the sauce was worth sopping up with some good bread.

 

Wheat baguette recommended for soaking up the sauce

I was a little rushed with the photography this week and wish the plating were more attractive.  Hopefully, you can get a sense of the picnic atmosphere of this spread. One of my favorite aspects of eating mussels is a trick my host father taught me where you use one empty shell to extract the meat from another shell. The French eat finger food in style! 

The spread