Moules Marinière

Today, you find me, at 8am on a grey weekday morning, almost overwhelmed with excitement. In a matter of hours, I will be heading to PARIS. Paris, my favourite place in the whole world. I almost never mention this, but I lived there for a year. This will be my first trip back since I locked the door of my unheated attic apartment for the last time, tiptoed down the 5 flights of stairs to avoid waking the sociopath neighbour, jumped in a car full of my most treasured possessions and hot footed it back to the UK almost five years ago.  I am expecting overwhelming surges of nostalgia as well as standing on street corners (not like that) scowling at tourists and muttering ‘well it wasn’t like this in my day’.

In honour of my imminent triumphal return to the City of Light, and because it was International Women’s Day (not really, although I did recently read Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman and I have a lot of thoughts on this subject *glares at the patriarchy*), yesterday I invited my friend over for moules marinière.

By happy coincidence, this particular friend lived with me in Paris and some/most of my nice memories from that year involve her. I would particularly like to mention NYE 2006, where we accidentally celebrated the new year 15 minutes early wearing men’s clothes, and she developed an actual allergy to rum that lasts to this day. It was a good night.  

Anyway, over she came and we ate moules and drank kirs and sat up for hours singing along to Leonard Cohen songs and hugging each other a lot.  Maybe this is why men hate women.

Moules Marinière

Serves 2

If you are put off by the thought of preparing mussels at home, don’t be. Almost nothing could be simpler, they don’t smell and they take literally 3 minutes to cook.

You will need:

Knob of butter

1 small onion

1 clove of garlic

1kg of mussels

Glass of white wine

Splash of double cream

Handful of chopped parsley

-Rinse the mussels thoroughly in cold water. (I put them in a colander under the tap and shake it a lot).

-The mussel shells should all be tightly closed. Any open ones should be tapped firmly. If they close, it’s probably fine. If they stay open, they’re dead and will quite possibly kill you too in revenge. Joking. But do discard them.

-If there are any fronds/stringy bits/seaweed attached to the mussel shells, pull them off.

-In a large saucepan, melt the butter, add the chopped onion and garlic and heat through.

-Throw the mussels in, throw the white wine on top, put the lid on the saucepan.

-Do nothing for 3 minutes.

-Shake the saucepan.

-Take the lid off, add a generous splash of double cream, stir through.

-Serve with the chopped parsley on top and possibly some chips or bread.

(you might need a spoon to eat the sauce with)

et voilà!