I’m tired. Many hours today have been spent in an enclosed space with no windows and little air and with a keyboard glued to my fingers. Made bearable by a market escape at lunch and lovely local mussels for $4.50 a kilogram. To investigate—a new cookbook purchase, The Australian Women’s Weekly Slim: Low-Fat Eating for Life (2004), and a recipe for Thai-flavoured mussels.
I’m tired. So I didn’t question the recipe. But I should have. Thank heavens the little black mussels were sweet and plump and (almost) managed to shrug off the recipe's unneccessary additions. Along with palm sugar, ginger, garlic, chilli and lime juice, the ingredients list included two tablespoons of fish sauce and half a cup of fresh coriander leaves (for 2kg of mussels). I've since found more than a few recipes for mussels that call for fish sauce, but it seems to me a bizarre addition given that mussels often ooze more salt than is bearable. And the handful of unchopped coriander tossed in at the end was overwhelming. (I know some people who claim “coriander hangovers”. Others who loathe it, and tell waiters they’re allergic to it. For me, it has to be in the right place and right quantity.)
Nor did the recipe mention that the mussels need to be pulled out of the pot as they open. I hate to think of the result if someone who followed this recipe used those dreadful big fat frozen New Zealand Greenlips, were heavy on the fish sauce, and then did not know to pull the mussels out as they open to avoid them toughening up. An apology of a recipe, which is a pity coming from the mass-market WW brand, because my hunch is that many people are scared of cooking mussels, yet they're one of the most sensational seafoods—brilliant flavour, lush texture, dead simple to prepare and invariably dirt cheap. Buy the small black ones if you're lucky enough to be able to get them when they're hours out of the water, treat them minimally and they're a triumph.
Sadly, tonight's dinner wasn't a triumph. I'm going to see what David Thompson has to say on the subject of Thai mussels and pour myself another Limoncello on the rocks (syrupy as it is, still so easy to down, and its consumption is an indication of how bare my bar is). It has helped me recover from the day and the fish sauce. Even better, I’ve just remembered a great cocktail recipe using the liqueur that was created by Melbourne’s Becco restaurant.
The Becco Bitter Lemon
25ml Campari
25ml Limoncello
1 lime, cut into a large dice (maybe 8 pieces)
ice, crushed
5ml lemon cordial (I like Schweppes)
tonic water
Shake all ingredients except tonic water together in a cocktail shaker. Pour into a tall glass and top up with tonic water. (If you share my love for the shape of the classic cocktail glass, there's no reason I can think of not to use one.) Serves 1.
