Mussels with Garlic and Cream

We ate mussels in Brussels. Obviously. If you like mussels then that’s one of the reasons to go to Brussels. There’s beer too of course and chocolate but the mussels are excellent; at least the ones that we had were. When we were in the restaurant waiting for our mussels, we realised that the way that they cooked them was different to the way that we usually cooked ours.

Most recipes that we’ve seen say to soften your onions, celery, garlic, etc, then add some wine or stock and then add the mussels and remove the pot from the heat as soon as all the mussels have opened. In the restaurant, they seemed to leave the mussels on a lot longer than that and they had been delicious, so we thought we would give it a go. Also, Kerri had ordered hers with garlic and cream, and they added both of these at the end of cooking.

So we softened a little finely chopped onion and some coarsely chopped celery and then added some white wine and fish stock. When the alcohol had cooked off the wine, we seasoned with a little black pepper and added the mussels. Then we put the lid on, turned the heat right down and waited for 15 minutes. While the mussels were cooking, we briefly fried some finely chopped garlic in a little oil and then added double cream. When the mussels were done, we added this garlic and cream mixture to them and stirred.

Mussels with frites are obviously very good, but we thought that bread would be very useful to soak up the sauce and we were right. The mussels themselves were tender and delicious and hadn’t dried out from the extended cooking time. Certainly the way that we’ll cook mussels next time we have them.