Mussels Fra Diavolo

Mussels.

The moment I saw the mussels, a picture of this dish appeared in my mind, and knew I had to make it. This dish was an adventure for me with a lot of learning. I grossed myself out while doing prep work, but the end result was so delicious, it was well worth it.

This was my first time handling live mussels. I used fresh wild ones as opposed to the smaller & green, farm raised ones. To prepare these, soak them in cold water for about 30 minutes. I don't know much about these guys, but I was afraid freezing water might kill them so I made sure the water wasn't icy cold. Of course, this might just be silly thinking.

After soaking, there should be a bunch of salt, sand, and other sediments that these guys spit out. Make sure to drain and rinse them thoroughly. If you're using wild mussels like I am, make sure to scrub the barnacles and other junk off their shells!

I learned that these guys have a thing called a "beard", which are filaments that mussels use to latch onto hard surfaces. Unfortunately, most of them weren't showing me their beard! I originally planned on simmering the mussels, shell and all, in the sauce but.. it just felt kind of icky now that I know they have a beard hiding in their shell. So, I decided to steam them lightly, just enough so that I kill them and have them open up. I steamed them by placing them in a pot with the lid on and cooking on high for about 4 minutes. Most of them should be open by now, if not, remove the open ones and cook for a few more minutes. Discard any that did not open.

Now I can finally make them shave their beards! Or I guess, yank them out. Oh, by the way, I found out it's really simple to de-beard them. Just grab the beard and tug! They generally came off really easily after being steamed. However, I de-bearded 2 lives ones prior and those are a lot harder and required much more effort.

While I was at it, I decided to just pull the meat from the shell. Sure, it's prettier and aesthetically pleasing with the shell on, but it's less messy and easier to eat shell-less. To shell, just put on a glove (or not) and grab the whole mussel and pull it off the posterior adductor muscle (the white stump) and the edges of the shell. This is where I got grossed out. If you study the anatomy closely (which I did), it just kind of looks really gross. But then again, most seafood look like overgrown bugs to me, so it might just be me.

I found this little baby crab inside one of the mussels. Poor guy, it was the size of my pinky nail!

As you de-shell them, you'll find lots of juices coming out from inside the shell. Make sure you don't throw any of it away, this is where all the flavor is! Take a piece of cheesecloth and a sieve, strain all the little extra sediments in the broth that came out when you opened to de-shelled the mussels. Set this aside.

Take 2 cloves of garlic and mince them up. If you're using the pre-minced ones in a jar, use 1 tablespoon. Also measure out the crushed red pepper, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

In a large pot or deep pan, melt your butter and lightly brown the garlic with the mixed spices for about a minute or until garlic is soft. Add the shrimp and cook gently on both sides. Set aside the shrimp. Leave the garlic and spices that are not stuck to the shrimp in the pan.

To the pot, add wine, marinara/pasta sauce, the yummy mussel juice from earlier and the shelled mussels. Simmer for approximately 3 minutes, just to make sure the mussels are cooked through.

After the 3 minutes, using a slotted spoon (or a slotted spatula because I don't own one), remove the mussel from the sauce.

I used a spoon to skim a little bit of the fat from the top. Cover and let the sauce simmer for a good 10 minutes or so. During this time, prep your pasta by cooking according to the directions on the box. I thought this thin spaghetti was perfect for this dish because the sauce is more on the soupy side.

Once it's done simmering, turn off the heat and add the mussel and shrimp back into the sauce. If you want, simmer the sauce with the lid off (before adding the seafood back in) to thicken the sauce up a little. At this point, the house smells sooo good and it's ready to serve!

Plate the pasta in a deep plate and ladle sauce and seafood over the pasta. I actually prefer dipping crusty bread as apposed to pasta for this dish.

Enjoy! I certainly did. It had the perfect amount of seafood flavor and spice. 


Ingredients
~12 mussels (cleaned)
2 cloves garlic (minced)
1/4 Tbs crushed red garlic (for mild, up to 1 Tbs for spicy)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt + pepper to taste
1 Tbs butter
~7 shrimps (deshelled)
2 oz wine (red for deeper/white for sweeter)
1 cup marinara sauce (avoid sweeter varieties; more for thicker sauce)
6 oz thin spagetti
1 loaf of crusty Italian bread
*Cheesecloth


Instruction

Mussel Prep

1. In a large bowl, soak live mussels in cold water for 30 minutes, making sure all of them are in the water.
2. Drain the dirty water and rinse the mussels thoroughly.
3. Scrub the barnacles off the surface of the shells.
4. Place mussels in a pot and heat on high with lid on for 4 minutes.
5. Remove the mussels that are open, close lid and heat rest for another 2 minutes. Remove all open mussels and discard unopened, saving the juices.
6. Remove the mussel beards by slightly tugging. Make sure you get all of it.
7. You can choose to leave the mussels in the shell at this point or remove them. To remove, just pull from the posterior adductor muscle (white stump) and the sides of the shell. Make sure to save all the juices. Discard empty shells.
8. Cut a piece of cheesecloth to sit in a sieve, filter extra sediments from the juices of the mussels. Set aside.

Mussels fra Diavolo Prep

1. Melt butter in a pot or a deep pan that has a lid on medium heat
2. Add minced garlic and spices to pot and cook for about 1 minute, just til the garlic softens.
3. Add shrimp to the pot and cook for about 1 minute on each side. Remove the shrimp, leaving the garlic and spices, and set aside.
4. Add wine, garlic, mussel juice. Bring to a simmer then add mussels to the pot. Cover and simmer for 3 minutes.
5. Remove the mussels from the sauce. Cover and turn up heat to medium high and let simmer for 10 minutes.
6. Prepare your pasta according to the directions on the box.
7. After approximately 10 minutes, remove lid and check the consistency of the sauce. Taste and add more salt accordingly at this point. If the sauce is too thin, add more marinara (1/4 cup at a time) and simmer for 5 extra minutes with lid off. Keep in mind that this is more of a soupy sauce, not a thick pasta sauce.
8. Once a desired thickness is achieved, turn off heat and add the shrimp and mussel back into the sauce and mix well to reheat mussels and shrimp through.
9. Plate some pasta in a deep plate or bowl, ladle sauce on and enjoy!

Dinner Rolls

Bread is something I was always hesitant to try making. I don't have experience with kneading dough, I don't own a bread maker, and I've only tried making something with yeast once -- and I don't think it went well.

Today I wanted to make a brioche. A fluffy, tall, and soft brioche. I saw a picture and it just looked soso good. The idea of making a nice brioche to enjoy with my morning coffee was the romantic part. The execution of it... not so much.

It all started to go wrong with the yeast. I had those pre-measured packets of dried yeast and figured that most standard recipes involving yeast would follow a 'standard' measurement (1 packet of yeast) but I was pretty wrong. I didn't realize this til I already started an attempt at multiplying the yeast. Notice the word attempt... yeah. I couldn't find my thermometer so I figured, hey.. how hard would it be to just guess what 100F would be? So I measured out some water, put my little packet of yeast in and waited. 5 minutes later, still nothing! I made a hot water bath for the original container that held my now, non-bubbling yeast with my not-warm-enough water. 5 minutes later, I see a hint of bubbling. I figured something was still wrong. At this point, most pictures indicate you should have a fluffy bunch of yeast bubbles beginning to climb up and try to escape your cup. That's when I realized I completely forgot to add sugar and was starving the poor things! I promptly added the sugar and the yeast started finally doing their thing (hallelujah!).

Now with my yeast multiplying, I figured I should bring out my other ingredients and begin prepping. Unfortunately, I found out at this point I only had 3 eggs. Brioche needed 6 eggs, plus one for wash. ....now what? At this point, I also realized I used too little yeast since the package came with 2 1/4 tsp and I needed 4 tsp. I panicked.

After a good 15 minutes or so, I was very luckily able to find a recipe for a bread that used exactly 2 1/4 tsp yeast and only needed 1 egg. But the fun doesn't end here.

In the middle of kneading my bread, I was thinking to myself, "Wow! This is so easy and not sticky like I remembered it to be! In fact, it seems a bit... dry." I had to look at the recipe again to find out that I, for some reason that I cannot even comprehend, read 1 cup of milk as 1/4 cup of milk. I panicked, again. I warmed up a 3/4 cup of milk and stood there thinking.. is it okay to put the milk in now? Would it ruin the dough? Should I just try baking this and see if it comes out okay?! In the end, I put in about 1/4 cup more of the milk and kneaded. It looked like pancake batter. It was watery and mushy and the dough wouldn't absorb the milk. I was about to give up... but decided, maybe if I knead a bit more... I kneaded for almost 20 minutes and somehow my dough ended up looking like dough! I proceeded as if I didn't do anything wrong and buttered my ball of dough, let it rise, and eventually baked it. This is the result of the panic inducing bread fiasco in my kitchen today, where a brioche turned into dinner rolls.

Ingredients
15 g sugar
2¼ teaspoons (1 pkg.) active dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
3/4 cup warm milk
1/2 stick melted butter
50 g sugar
1 egg (lightly beaten)
1 teaspoon salt
 560 cups flour

1 egg beaten with 1 tsp of water and a small pinch of salt -- for the egg wash.

Instruction

1. In a small bowl/cup, combine warm water, yeast and 15 grams of sugar and allow to multiply for 10 minutes.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine warm milk, melted butter, 50 g sugar, egg, salt and yeast mixture. Gently stir everything together.
3. Add 420g flour to the bowl and stir everything together with your hands and proceed to knead. Once solid enough to lift, take the dough out and knead on a lightly floured flat surface. Continue to knead for 10 minutes adding more flour if needed, until dough is shiny and no longer sticking to the sides. Use the ball of dough to get excess dough/flour from the sides of the mixing bowl.
4. Place the ball of dough back into the bowl. Grease the top of the dough with melted butter or olive oil in order to prevent dough from drying out. Cover with a damp cloth (make sure there is no water dripping out, wring the water til no more comes out) and set in a warm place to rise. I turned my oven to 350F for 2 minutes, turned off the oven, and placed it in the middle rack. Allow the bread to rest and rise for 60-90 minutes until about double in size.
5. Punch dough in the center and move to flat surface. Separate dough into approx. 24 even round balls and place on cookie sheet with parchment paper.
6. Whisk your egg, water, and salt mixture to create the egg wash and brush the tops of each ball.
7. Cover again with damp cloth and allow to rise again for approx. 30 minutes.
8. Bake for 20-25 minutes in 350F oven.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

October always feels like the month that represents fall for me. It starts to get chilly and the leaves start to change colors. The weather becomes perfect for baking.

Today was great baking weather, chilly enough but not cold enough to turn on the heat. The warmth from the oven was enough to warm up the house a bit while making it smell great. These muffins made my house smells like fall! They are very soft, not the typical thick crumb of a muffin, but more like a light and fluffy cupcake without being overly sweet. Next time, I would add more spice and a little less chocolate.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

• 213 g Flour
• 201 g Sugar
• 12 g Pumpkin Pie Spice
• 6 g Baking Soda
• 4 g Baking Powder
• 2 g Salt
• 2 Eggs
• 1 C Pumpkin Puree
• 1 Stick of Butter (melted)
• 1 C Chocolate Chips

1. Whisk together flour, sugar, spice, baking soda, baking powder & salt. I usually like to put the dry ingredients through a strainer to avoid clumps.
2. Beat together eggs, pumpkin puree and melted butter.
3. Incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
4. Fold chocolate chips into batter.
5. Preheat oven 350F while lining and adding batter to the muffin tins.
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes.