Commentary by Mark LaFay
I recently had the pleasure of spending a few days with some good friends celebrating the impending nuptials of one of our good friends. We spent two days in Illinois doing a bit of fishing and cooking. I’m sure you’re thinking bachelor party.I can assure you it was tame and quite lazy. We cooked over wood on Friday night, making pizzas in a pizza oven (crust recipe to come soon). We also made mussels that were out of this world and worth sharing!
Mussels are a great meal, really any time of the year. I enjoy them particularly in the cool and cold months, mainly because I like to cook over fire or hot coals and not sweat buckets. We burned off a bit of hickory to make hot coals and then got after it. Get a nice hot bed of coals going, preferably with hard wood, and while your fire is burning down to hot embers, follow this recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1-2 pounds of mussels
- 1 bulb fennel (you will use half a cup of dice)
- 2 large shallots
- 1 bulb garlic
- 1 16 oz can San Marzano tomatoes
- 1 lemon
- 1 cup dry white wine
12 oz. dry Spanish style chorizo
Directions:
Go through your mussels and remove any that are open. Remove beards (this is seaweed, kelp, etc. that the mussel clamped down on). Medium-dice fennel and chorizo. Set aside, peel and finely dice shallot and half of the bulb of garlic. Place all diced ingredients into large cast iron pan and place over the coals. Cook until chorizo has rendered a bit of fat and is slightly brown. You also want the fennel, shallot, and garlic cooked down but not brown. Deglaze with white wine, add tomatoes (juice and all), allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes to get nice. Squeeze in your lemon, add 1-2 pounds of mussels. Allow to simmer until all the mussels are wide open and steaming.
Serve with crispy bread for dipping in the sauce. Enjoy!
