This Thing with Fresh Mussels

Mussels just cooked to the freshness of its origins.

Picture this: at low tide, the rock pools are filled with eight-pronged starfish trying hard to stay immersed in the sea waters, and the delectable baby mussels are clamped shut till the tides return to shore. So it’s little wonder that Eden’s coastline is dotted with mussel farms and its restaurant with wharf views offer them truly fresh as appetizers and mains.

What a great promise for a divine dinner watching the sun setting below the dreamy blue horizon. But it is a promise unfulfilled: the mussels were rubbery and tasteless from spending too much time in the cooking pot. It’s only saving grace was the sumptuous new Asian slightly spicy soup in which the mussels are cooked.

It is doubly disappointing because I have three great ways to serve mussels to my dinner guests’ satisfaction. The first is inspired by the way the restaurant, Three Chimneys, prepares its mussels in the Belgium (European?) traditional fashion: speedily poached in a dry chardonnay with hearty chunks of celery, carrots and shallots. The moment their mussel shells gap open, they’re equally speedily served.

But that is out rivaled by a wonderfully modern and equally simple Australian take: it smolders the fresh mussels in sparkling verjuice and creamy basil-infused tomato passata. Again, the mussels are cooked a relatively short time, so that they retain their orangey muscle and keep its insides truly creamy.

That both features must be retained holds true even when the raw mussels are added into a Spanish paella. For only then can it lend its wonderful flavour to complement the seasoned rice and remain a tender contrast to the pleasantly spiced grainy grains.

So I’ll drink to my good fortune that I live in this garden city, no bigger than a little red dot on the globe left under the sun, where we get a fresh catch of all sorts of seafood from our surrounding neighbours. For cooking the above dishes with pre-cooked air-flown varieties will lend that rubbery and tastelessness to all three of my dishes drastically. Now that will never do, a double crime to over cooking fresh mussels.