Mussels

Last night I ate some mussels for the first time.  We were at our local Italian restaurant celebrating some recent birthdays and deciding what eat.  The restaurant is called Marabinis and I would highly recommend it. 

I wasn’t going to have a starter as I was still feeling full from the night before but everyone else decided that they were and it would have been rude not to join them.  I had been sitting staring at the menu for some time unable to decide what to have when the two mussel dishes seemed to jump out at me, Cozze Marinara, steamed fresh mussels cooked in white wine, garlic and parsley and Cozze Pepate, mussels cooked in garlic, tomato, white wine and chilli.  I have no idea why, I had eaten bivalves before, a few small clams but never mussels and I had managed to get this far in life avoiding them.

I think I’d always been put of by the shells with images in my mind of barnacles and seaweed stuck to their outsides, indeed I’ve never really been fond of any food that you cannot eat entirely but my eyes kept being drawn back to the two dishes.  By now the rest of the party was ordering and soon it would be my turn.  The only decision was which dish, which would taste better, the white wine or the chilli?  My choice was the Cozze Pepate and it arrived in a large steaming bowl with a plate for the shells and a bowl of lemon water to clean my hands.  Not only a new dish but a whole new set of paraphernalia too.

And so the time had come for me to eat my first mussel, overcome my prejudices and finally find out what they taste of.  What did they taste of?  That’s a question that took me some time to get my head around.  They certainly tasted pleasant although it was a little while before I could overcome the thought of eating them.  The sauce was lovely, with a rich taste of tomato and slightly piquant with the chilli but what did they taste of? 

They certainly tasted of something and then it suddenly came to me.  They tasted of the beach at Boulmer on the Northumberland coast on a warm spring day.  They tasted of the salty sea air blowing through my hair and the smell of seaweed drying on the rocks. They tasted of the wet sand left by the receding tide and the sandpipers digging at the shore line.  They tasted of the marram grass in the dunes, the ragwort and the thistles.  They tasted of the seaside in a nice tomato and chilli sauce, lovely.

Did I enjoy them?  Yes I did.  Would I have them again?  Yes I would and by the way I had the Gnocchi Rugola e Dolcelatte in a blue cheese and rocket leaf sauce for my main course but I had had that before.