A dinner fit for kings! I went down to our local beach today and picked some mussels. As you do. Not much time tonight, so straight to it. I used what I had on hand, feel free to substitute fresh ingredients 🙂

You will need:

About 20-30 mussels or so

1/4 bottle of white wine (How you choose to dispose of the other 3/4 is entirely up to you. Just saying. I won’t tell)

Half a small onion, finely chopped

A pinch of thyme

A sprinkling of black pepper

1 & 1/2 tbsp of dried parsley

A guilty chunk of butter (about 60g)

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1 packet of prawns, about 20 in it if I remember correctly! (Alas, the countryside has a sever lack of fresh prawns)

30g butter

2 cloves of garlic (you know me and my garlic)

2 tablespoons finely chopped onion

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Um… Rice. Whatever kind you like. I used long grain today because I didn’t have to stand on a chair to get it. So there.

1. And now the fun stuff. Put your rice on. I use a rice cooker and love it to bits. Otherwise, go with manufacturers instructions!

1. Mussels need to be clean and barnacle free. They should be if you buy them. Just make sure. Give them a few rinses. Discard ANY that are open. They shall give you food poisoning. And that ain’t pretty. Going to write up a post on how to clean em if you’re picking them for free (yaay!) in a sustainable fashion and all that!
2. Ok put all your 1st batch of ingredients (minus the mussels) into a nice saucepan that has a lid. Bring to the boil and let it reduce a little and let the alcohol boil off.
3. Pop your mussels in, bang a lid on (I do like a bit of noise in the kitchen) and give em a wee shake.
4. Leave on a boiling heat for about 5-7 minutes. When the mussels are open and peering out at you from their shells, they are done. And yum. Believe me.
5. Take out the mussels. Discard any that have NOT opened. They are bad. Out to get you. Trust me.
6. Keep the broth on a boil until the liquid has reduced by half. This? This liquid of wonder is what you will spoon over your mussels and perhaps rice. As it is amazing. Like really.. It’s really good.

1. For the prawns: Defrost thoroughly if frozen. Peel and de-vein if fresh.
2. Heat your butter, garlic, onions in a pan until soft and beautiful smelling (heaven!)
3. Add your prawns and cook until heated through, or pink if you’re using fresh. It shouldn’t take too long, if you overcook them they’ll get rubbery and disappointing.
4. It’s as simple as that. Really. Taste one. See? Yum.
5. Grind some black pepper over and enjoooy

Serve the whole lot with some lovely fluffy rice. Mmmm fluffy rice. You could probably mix it up a bit but my family don’t always like food touching each other. Particularly with new recipes. I’m not sure this all even goes together thaaat well. I just wanted to cook both mussels and garlic prawns. So there you have it. Yep.