Although this meal would be suitable for any evening that you wish, it is certainly a fine option for New Year. It is a super easy meal to prepare and so many people avoid because of the perceived difficulty. Cooking mussels is easier than boiling potatoes correctly.
Mussels are on sale this week at one of the large chains – though their prices are in kilograms, it amounts to $2.00 per pound. Their normal price is $2.50 per pound. It was common to see them at 99 cents per pound only a few years back.
The only two things you have to keep in mind for cooking this shellfish is that you only want to cook live ones and that you don’t eat the beards (a small grass-like piece which allows a mussel to attach to rocks and other anchors in the ocean).
Looking for live mussels is easy – you want to ensure the shells are closed. If a shell is open, knock it on the counter a few times (not hard) – it should close over the next few minutes. If it remains open, discard it.
Removing beards is also easy – simply pull them from the shell before or after cooking.
To cook this shellfish, add liquid to the bottom of a pan with a cover and bring to a boil. You can use anything you want – white wine with garlic, coconut milk with curry paste and shallots or my all time favorite, tomato sauce. A few bay leaves or pepper can be added – no need for salt. You are steaming the mussels so there’s no need to cover them with liquid – and the mussels will add their own juices to whatever you are steaming them in, creating a salty brine that is amazing to dip bread into as you eat.
Each person will eat about a pound. Add a jar of tomato sauce ($3), a no-knead bread ($2), fresh parsley to top it off ($2) and 4 pounds of mussels ($8) and you have a fabulous meal for $3.75 each. Buying an extra 2 pounds (bringing the total to $4.75 each) would leave most everyone positively stuffed at the table. Alternately you could skip on the extra mussels and buy coconut milk and curry paste and make mussels two ways to compare and contrast.
Once you’ve cooked it, do not throw out the leftover stock. Strain and freeze it for a decadent addition to pasta, seafood chowder. This stock freezes well and sells for $4 a jar (which is ludicrous considering that the mussels to make it would be cheaper – it’s like getting the mussels for free). This flavor would easily eliminate any need to add additional flavours to a sauce and drop the cost per serving of your New Years meal even lower.
