Since break started last week, I've been adding white wine to a lot of things. Like apple pie. And soup. And chicken marinades. So I set out to test out the cliche: mussels in white wine sauce.
I've never actually ordered this in a restaurant, and at home we usually dip them in a soy/rice vinegar/veg oil marinade. Soooo... I'm not sure what this is supposed to taste like. The sauce I made was more of a background flavor; subtle & complementary to the seafood. I followed the ingredients for the dish in "use real butter," which also had a nice take on bouillabaisse that I recreated about a week or two ago. Mine is uglier, but I didn't have any fresh greens around (having just returned from family time). Also, I was hungry and wanted to eat. Such is the dilemma with blogging about dinner.
Mods:
- Barely used butter for the sauce (she recommends 1 stick for 2 lbs; I had 2 lbs mussels and used 1/2 tablespoon). Subbed in clam juice instead and whatever herbs I had lying around. I am not a big fan of dousing everything in butter.
- Cooked the mussels in two batches, since the biggest pot I had wouldn't hold all of them on the bottom. I brought about 1 cm of water to a boil & added the mussels until the bottom surface was covered - sort of like a boil/steam combo, so that the mussels aren't totally submerged in water.
- Mise en place: Boil/steam mussels; heat 1/2 T olive oil & 1/2 T butter on high heat, sautee onions & garlic, douse with 1/2 c of wine, season w/ salt & pepper. Let the alcohol boil off, & drizzle over dish of mussels.
What I might do differently:
- More butter. Maybe 3 tablespoons.
- I think I like sauce to be saucier; i.e. creamier, more substantial; less like mussels doused in wine. Is this what it's supposed to be? Somehow I imagined it to be... thicker. Perhaps this is where my phobia of consuming half a stick of butter in one sitting fits in. I just can't do it, though I know it would be damnably good.
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