Dish #2 – Mussels with parsley garlic butter, fennel salad

Started this dish by slicing really thin all the salad ingredients. I used a food processor with a slicing metal dish. Sliced Green Smith apples, red onions, and fennel.

 

For the salad dressing I mixed olive oil, very good balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard with seeds, lemon, salt, pepper and sugar.

In the end mixed some chopped mint

Parsley butter started out by cleaning the parsley and selecting just the leaves, tossing the stems.

Chopping the parsley together with garlic

Move to another container and add soft butter, mix together.

 

This is how it looks like when mixed

 

I bought fresh mussels on the market. About 1-2 hours before serving I took them out of the package and cleared all the open ones. Then washed the closed ones well. Then I fed them their last supper. This is something I read in a website about mussels that I wanted to try. I put them in a bowl covered in water, then put a fistful of flour and some sugar and mixed. They started opening their mouth and eat. After about half an hour I washed them again to get ready to cook.

 

To cook I only put a very small amount of water in a pan and tossed them in. In few min they all opened up nicely and turned into orange-pink color. I strained them from the liquid that can be used as a fish soup base or stock for sauce.

Plating: in a Cappuccino mug we put the salad as a bed for the mussels.

Then two mussels with a pinch of parsley butter on the edge. The diner supposed to open the clam with his fingers and eat the mussel straight from the clam with the butter.

People really liked this dish, because the fresh mussels taste very good. The feeding of the mussels before cooking gave them a volume, a puff and a unique flavor. I had guests that thought they don’t like mussels but ate them and enjoyed. I also had a guest that liked the fennel salad even though she thought she didn’t like fennel at all! 🙂