"Perhaps the most impressive of all the cookbook blogs are the three devoted to the 2004 edition of Gourmet magazine's "The Gourmet Cookbook" -- all 5¼ pounds and 1,300-odd recipes of it. Befitting this culinary Everest, all three writers are overachievers in their professional lives."

--Lee Gomes, The Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2008
"I should have told you before how much I've been enjoying reading your thoughts. You seem like such a great cook."

--Ruth Reichl, Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet Magazine, June 8 2008, comment on "Chocolate Velvet Ice Cream".

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Baked Mussels with Parsley Garlic Butter

Well folks, if you're feeling poor and you don't want to bother with too much fuss at dinner, Baked Mussels with Parsley Garlic Butter is the meal for you.

One of the charming things about mussels is their low low price, even lower if you pick them yourselves off the rocks. And yes, all ye city dwellers, you CAN pick them off the rocks, cook them and eat them. They do not have to undergo special refrigeration, sterilization or transportation via 18-wheeler to be edible (as my husband once suspected when I was trying to get him to help me harvest dinner one afternoon at Small Point, Maine).

This dish is so easy (if you don't mind getting your food processor dirty)--all you do is dump the mussels in a baking pan first. Then put the butter, garlic, parley (you don't even have to worry about getting out all the big stems), and s&p in the processor and grind it til it's a lovely green. Put green butter on top of mussels, cover with foil, bake in 425 oven til open, and you've got yourself dinner. Make sure you have bread, for heaven's sake. And also make sure (which I didn't, much to my distress) that you have a pinot grigio or a sauvignon blanc--the dish cries out for it.

Bon appetit!

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