Thai Style Mussels

Lately we have been cooking a number of different Thai dishes and happened to have some curry paste left over that we had made for the rabbit curry.  We didn’t want to waste it, so we tried to think of something interesting to do with it.  Kerri thought of using it to cook a Thai mussel dish, which sounded interesting, so we gave it a go.  It went something like this:

Ingredients
2 or 3 tablespoons Thai curry paste (it probably doesn’t matter what sort)
half a tin of coconut milk
a bag of mussels of the sort that supermarkets sell in mesh bags
1 or 2 tablespoons of fish sauce
oil for frying
small bunch of coriander leaves, roughly chopped

First prepare the mussels.  Examine them all and discard any that are broken or do not close when tapped.  If they have “beards” on them, remove these and give them a good scrub.

Add a little oil to a large saucepan and heat.  When the oil is hot, add the curry paste and fry, stirring occasionally.  Season with the fish sauce, stir a little more, then add the coconut milk.  When this has come to the boil, add the mussels and put the lid on.  Cook for a few minutes, shaking occasionally, until the mussels have opened.  Stir in the coriander leaves and serve.  Discard any mussels that have not opened of course.

We loved this.  With very little cooking, the coconut milk had taken on huge amounts of flavour from the paste, and a lot of this had gone into the mussels too.  We just ate the mussels and then ate the coconut milk “soup” with a spoon.  It would be good to have some noodles in this too to make a proper meal out of it.