We had a little trouble trying to find fresh mussels. Lee went to Whole Foods in Palo Alto, and they had some for $5.99/lb. But, when tapped, none closed, so they were pretty dead. The clerk said to come back the next day. Lee was thinking about trying the Los Altos Whole Food since it’s bigger but ended up looking at Najiya Market in Mountain View, but they didn’t have them. Across the street, at Ranch 99, Lee found very fresh mussels for $3.99/lb., but they came in a bag, so you couldn’t sort through individual dead ones.
We started off going through the recipe but we didn’t have thyme, which probably was a major element that was missing, but the freshness of the mussels made up for that. We cooked the mussels for about 3 minutes. Most of the mussels were cooked well, but a few were still a little raw. So, like the other posts mentioned, probably a little longer would be better, say 4-5 minutes. We substituted chervil for the parsley since we had a bunch left from the frites trial.
Overall the mussels were very good in the onion, butter and wine sauce. I think the key element is freshness when it comes to this recipe. We had a few dead mussels, but not to many. So I’d say sourcing your seafood is a very important part of making this dish. The sauce went well with bread as well.
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