Steamed Mussels in White Wine Broth
Mussels were always one of those dishes that I never order at a restaurant because:
- mussels (along with their mollusk-y brethren) seem a tad hoity-toity- give me an order of nachos any day.
- the dish as a whole is a bit unreliable given that its success is largely dependent on how fresh the mussels are, and who really knows how often the restaurant you are currently seated in gets shipments of mussels.
- I have issues with paying for a dish where more than half of its weight in inedible proteinaceous material (a.k.a. the shell), and lets face it, mussel dishes are not the cheapest appetizer item. Yes, I am still at that stage in life where when I eat out, I try to get my money’s worth, which means everything on the plate needs to be edible for under $10.
After sharing an appetizer plate of mussels from Central Kitchen with some friends, I found that steamed mussels are not only TASTY sea-flavored morsels, but that I had underestimated the quantity of edible matter in the bowl because I had not factored in the delicious BROTH that often accompanies steamed mussels. The mussels were served with french fries and as I used last of the fries to sop up some of the rich, flavorful white wine broth, I daydreamed about how when I made this at home, I would also make crusty garlic bread to sop up every last drop of the amazing broth.
Making mussels at home was surprisingly quick and simple.. and to top it all off, I bought more than enough mussels for two for less than half of what we paid at Central Kitchen. Once the mussels are steamed, they taste like sweet seawater and the white wine broth is really bright with freshly squeezed lemon juice. My one criticism would be that the broth flavors were not strong enough, perhaps because once the mussels are cooked and open up, they release some liquid (sea? water?) which dilutes the broth. Next time I will try reducing down the white wine/chicken broth mixture before steaming the mussels for more concentrated flavors to eat with my bread!
Steamed Mussels in White Wine Broth
adapted from Zoe blog
1-2 pounds of mussels, soaked in water for about 15 minutes to let the debris fall to the bottom of the bowl
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 shallots, finely minced
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons chopped parsley, for garnish
- Place mussels in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Let sit for 20 minutes until all grit and dirt fall to the bottom of the bowl. After that, de-beard the mussels by pulling out the excess vegetation and discard. If any of the mussels are open, discard.
- In a large pot heat olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat. Stir in shallots until softened, then garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in white wine, chicken broth and drained mussels.
- Cover pot and steam over medium heat for 8 minutes. Stir occasionally.
- Serve immediately with chopped parsley and a few squeezes of lemon juice. Add the 2nd tablespoon of butter at the end.
Bourride
I have generally always been afraid to try new things: mostly due to an intense fear of failure and embarassment, underscored by insecurity and indecisiveness. This is something that stems back from my childhood; my parents always characterized me as having “a cautious nature.” As I grew older and gained confidence in myself, I began to progress from trying little things (making new friends in college) to bigger things (moving to a totally unfamiliar city across the country for graduate school), to even bigger things (rock-climbing, and more recently- patent law).
However, the one place where I have always been eager to try new things is the kitchen! This may be due to the fact that my hunger for tasty foods always outweighs the fear of failure. That’s where this soup comes in… it was a brand spanking new endeavor for me. We first tasted this soup at Ten Tables, where we celebrated my birthday with their amazing 3 course tasting menu, and it knocked our socks off. It became my goal to re-create it.
Bourride is a Provençal fish soup that is thickened with aioli (a zesty garlic mayonnaise). It was rich, yet not too heavy due to a bright lemon-y finish, with seafood so fresh they were sweet, and tasty little bits of polenta and earthy kale. I searched for recipes online but none encompassed all the aspects of the soup that we had tasted, so I combined a few recipes and relied heavily on improvisation to achieve the final product.
The entire dish was a challenge because never before have I:
- Cooked mussels.
- Cooked monkfish (though I watched an Iron Chef America battle featuring this as the secret ingredient; these guys are seriously “monsters-of-the-deep” ugly!).
- Cooked kale.
- Made aioli (by hand, no less).
- Made a dish where the main components were ingredients I had never worked with or cooked before.
So as you can see, there were several steps at which utter failure was highly imminent… and yet… somehow it all came together. It was so rewarding, not only to my stomach but my psyche as well, because this soup totally rocked and we both felt like we were right back at Ten Tables.
Bourride with Monkfish and Mussels
makes about 4 dinner-sized servings
2 lbs. mussels
1.5 lbs. monkfish fillet
2 leeks, sliced and rinsed
1 bunch of kale, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup white wine
5 cups fish stock (I did not make my own, I found a fish stock concentrate at Whole Foods that I mixed into 5 cups of boiling water- can’t remember the brand, but it was in the canned section by the canned sardines and anchovies)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 sprigs thyme (fresh)
zest from 1 lemon
1 egg yolk
salt and pepper
1 cup home-made aioli (recipe as follows)
1 cup polenta (recipe as follows)
- Rinse and scrub mussels. Discard any mussels that are broken.
- In a large pot or dutch oven, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil on medium heat. Cook leeks and garlic for about 5 minutes. Add white wine, mussels, and thyme sprigs. Let liquid come to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer (low), and cover for 5 minutes.
- Mussels should be cooked in about 5-8 minutes (mine were done in 6), all mussels should open. If ones do not open, throw those away. Transfer cooked mussels to a separate bowl, to prevent from overcooking.
- Add fish stock, kale, and polenta and simmer, covered for 30 minutes or until kale is tender (I had no idea how long this would take; I originally started with only 2 cups of fish stock and by the time the kale cooked, half of the soup had boiled off!). In the meantime, sear and cook the monkfish and prepare the aioli.
- In a medium saucepan, heat one tablespoon of oil on high heat. Sear the monkfish fillets, about 2-4 minutes on each side until nicely browned. Then add to the soup while simmering, and cook until just cooked through. Depending on the thickness of the fillets, should take about 8-12 minutes. Remove cooked fish until soup is ready.
- Once aioli is ready, mix in another egg yolk. Then add 1/2 cup of simmered soup into aioli mixture and slowly mix. Then slowly add the aioli mixture, 1/2 cup at a time, to the simmering soup. The soup should thicken a bit to become more creamy.
- Continue to reduce soup at a simmer until it tastes good to you. Add salt, lemon zest, and pepper to the soup.
- Add the mussels and monkfish back into the soup for a few minutes and serve.
Aioli
5 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 egg yolks (at room temperature)
juice from 1 lemon
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup olive oil
pinch of salt
I originally tried doing this in my 9 cup food processor… it did NOT work. I think the area was just too big for the yolk and mustard to form a proper homogeneous emulsion. The aioli broke (separated to look a bit curdled and oily), and I made the mistake of adding a bit to the soup hoping that the soup would fix it… it didn’t. Little oil/egg droplets rested on the top of the soup- definitely not the effect I was looking for. Lesson learned. I got over my fear and just decided to make the aioli as the recipe suggested.. whisking by hand. It was super easy and came together in less than 5 minutes! Once I added all the successful aioli the soup thickened beautifully, AND the droplets from the failed aioli attempt disappeared (whew!).
- Separate egg yolks (save the whites! You can freeze egg whites!) and whisk. Add mustard and whisk until the emulsion is homogeneous.
- Slowly dribble olive oil into the egg yolks while whisking briskly. The aioli should come together within a minute or two; the consistency should be similar to mayonnaise.
- Add the minced garlic and lemon juice to flavor the aioli.
Polenta (makes about 2 cups)
1 cup yellow cornmeal, stone ground (or polenta)
2 1/2 cups boiling water
1/4 cup heavy cream
pinch of salt
- Begin preparing before the soup. Bring 2 1/2 cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan.
- Add polenta or cornmeal and whisk briskly to dissolve. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, whisking continuously. Add the heavy cream and continue to whisk and cook for another 5 minutes until the polenta is soft and no longer gritty. The texture should be pretty thick and paste-y (pretty solid).
- Transfer the polenta to a plate and let cool to room temperature. Add half of the polenta (about 1 cup) to the soup by the spoonful and let dissolve into soup. It will slightly thicken the soup but some solid bites of polenta goodness will remain in the soup.
Risotto with Mushrooms and Asparagus, and Seared Scallops
I have a confession to make. I don’t really know how to cook rice.
I know, I know, I’m ASIAN and I don’t know how to cook rice?!?! How can this be???
I blame it all on technology. Seriously. I grew up in a household that had not one, but three rice cookers. One for everyday use, a larger one for parties, and a newer one, gifted many Christmases ago from Grandma, just in case the everyday one broke (which never happened). When I reached that age where I could “help cook,” my parents taught me how to measure and wash the rice, how to add the appropriate amount of water (to the first line of my pinky finger when held perpendicular to the bed of rice, the tip of my pinky just touching the top of the rice), close the lid, and then… PUSH THE BUTTON. Twenty or so minutes later, without fail, perfect, fluffy, white rice.
When I left home for college, one of the first things I packed was a mini rice cooker. It wasn’t until Andreas and I started cooking dinner together just a few years ago that I came upon two startling realizations: he doesn’t own a rice cooker, and more importantly, I have no idea how to cook rice on the stove. Now, I understand the principles of cooking rice… and you would think that someone who mixes and boils and incubates things for specific times all day long in the lab would be able to handle cooking rice on the stove-top. However, I have had so many failures of under- or over-cooked rice and every untasty stage between, that many rice dishes that I find mentally irresistable (risotto and paella, mmmm….) are also overwhelmingly intimidating. My few laughable attempts resulted in gummy yet paradoxically crunchy, mostly inedible concoctions.
A few weeks ago, Andreas and I had a lovely dinner at Grotto, and embarked on a transcendent experience with each bite of their parmesan risotto. It was the perfect consistency- creamy, yet firm; the flavor was full and robust. It inspired me to try my hand at risotto at home, once again. And I’m so glad I did, because it turned out pretty freaking awesome.
I’m not quite sure what I did this time that made this endeavor so much more successful than previous ones. I can only think of two things: it was my birthday (yes I’m about a week behind on posts), and I set the stove setting between 5 and 6 (moderately high heat) and DID NOT TOUCH IT FOR THE ENTIRE PROCESS. I have this horrible habit of fiddling with the stove during rice cooking- which is probably the sole reason for my inability to cook rice. I blame it on insecurity: I set the temperature, but then start to doubt myself and so I fiddle with it, then a few minutes later, convince myself that now it’s too high, and lower it.. only to return yet a few minutes later to adjust it to somewhere in between.. you get the idea.
Anyway, I wanted to cook myself a nice birthday dinner, and since the temperature has been steadily dropping, the warm richness of risotto seemed like a fitting indulgence. I paired it with seared scallops because it felt a little extravagant, I love them, and they are a light counterpart to the risotto. I had hoped I would have some risotto leftover to try an arancini (risotto cake) recipe… but of course, there was none. Next time!
Risotto with Mushrooms and Asparagus
adapted from Gourmet, 2003
1 cup arborio rice
1 large shallot, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup white wine
4 cups chicken broth (low sodium)
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan reggiano (the real stuff, I swear it’s so much more amazing than regular parmesan)
2 tablespoons butter
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1 inch length
8-10 cremini mushrooms, chopped in slices or chunks
1. Pour chicken broth into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Once boil, reduce heat to low simmer.
2. In medium sized skillet, melt 1 tablespoon butter and saute mushrooms and asparagus about 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once done, set aside.
3. In medium sized saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium high heat. Add shallots and garlic, stirring often to soften for a few minutes. Add rice and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup white wine and stir rice, until wine is mostly absorbed.
4. Ladle 1 cup of simmering broth to the rice and stir until mostly absorbed, about 5 minutes. Continue to ladle in simmering broth, one cup at a time, until rice is tender, yet still firm, and creamy looking, about 20 minutes. Additional broth may be needed to get the risotto to your desired consistency. Take off heat and add parmesan, salt and pepper and mushrooms and asparagus from earlier. After cooling, the risotto thickens quite a bit, so if you are re-heating, add a bit of broth to loosen the risotto.
Seared Scallops
8-10 large scallops, rinsed and patted dry with paper towels
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon oil
1. Remove “foot” from scallops. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Heat butter and oil in skillet over high heat, let the skillet get really hot to nicely sear the scallops. Place scallops in skillet with space between them. Cook scallops without moving them until golden and crisp, about 2-3 minutes. Turn scallops and cook on other side for 1-2 minutes.
