Mussels and Chorizo (with Bread!)

It wasn't too long ago that the sight of uncooked mussels would carry me back to the summers of my youth in Newport Beach, California. The thought of eating these creatures would never have occurred to me back then.  We would play on the beach and pry the mussels that grew on harbor piers to use as fishing bait.   Given that mussels are filter feeders and the bay at that time wasn't exactly known for its pristine waters I doubt many others would have considered them for fine dining either.

Even though my friends and I would not have wanted to eat them anyway my grandmother would always make a big show of reminding us that some people, somewhere, actually enjoyed eating these gooey snot-like creatures.  "Oooh, gross!" we would always exclaim.  We were content to smash them with a hammer, dig out their organs with the dull kitchen knife she allowed us use for bait and slither them onto fishing hooks.  Mussel ooze would stain the sidewalk and mark the spot where we were fishing that particular afternoon.    

Grandma's tales of humans feasting on mussels seemed so outrageous that I'm not sure we ever believed actually her.   To my young ears these tales sounded like the tales my classmate Jessica Ditweiler would tell of the time came back from a Japanese vacation and shared how she ate (gasp!)  raw fish.  I didn't believe Jessica either.    I mean, raw fish? 

It seems unimaginable to me that the young boy of yesterday could transported by the site of a bucket of mussels not to the beaches of Newport, but rather to the bistros of Paris or New York.  

But they do. 

My imagination usually includes sharing a bowl of mussels with dear friends since sharing a bowl of moules and a bottle or two of Vueve Cliquot is probably the best way reacquaint with a dear friends.   At no time in the evolution of my childhood imagination into an adult reality did I ever dream that I would make delicious mussels all by myself and in my own home.  

Until this week, I hadn't.

Mussels have been at the top of my "Foods I've Always Wanted to Make  But Haven't Yet" list for years even though everything I had read about moules promised they were easier to make than scrambled eggs.  Still, I had not gotten around to making them.

Maybe it was the bait thing? It seemed that where mussels were concerned I was defintily suffering from "chef's block".  

If it wasn't the latent memories of fishing ooze maybe it was my unfamiliarity with cooking a food that could die in my fridge that was the cause of my chef's block?  Mussels do need to be kept alive, over ice, wet, and able to breath real oxygen while they wait to be cooked. That seems like a lot of responsibility to take on, doesn't it?   What if I accidentally serve up a rigor mortised bivalve in a deceptively lovely sauce and accidentally kill a loved one?  

Stop laughing!  Haven't we all heard stories of people who have known someone (who knows someone) who got fatal (or at least really really bad) food poisoning "from some bad mussels"?

Of course now I can't even recall which friend of a friend I heard this about first now but somehow I began likening the unfounded dangers of dining at home on mussels to the real life thrill seeking equivalent  of munching on some potentially deadly Fugu sashimi.  One wrong bite and "bam"! 

Somehow it has just seemed a lot less stressful to me to leave this dish to the professionals!   

Mussels and Chorizo (with Bread!)

Peppery Chocolate Pot de Crème

 

In the living room a baby cries out; while slightly less angry, but surely just as passionate, pots of velvety chocolate smush demand to be noticed at the table.  A first lingering bite befuddle the barometers of taste; they are left to grasp mixed messages fluttering across their allegedly cultivated tongues.  

"Did I just...?"

Another question is asked.  

"Is that...?"  

It seems each pot has realized the best response to indulgent sin is not always confession, but more sin.  The sin of omission.   So I will say nothing as well and let them all wonder.  

"Isn't that always the way?", I think, but this time to myself. 

Light itself looks sarcastic when caught falling onto the frothy mix of milky sweet puffery and chocolate bits which obfuscate the copious chocolate cauldron below it.  A lip smacks provoking an awkward  moment where we are left to ponder just what, if anything, is animating us.  

Perhaps it is not a libidinous palate but simply a tumescent hunger over-thinking the situation?  Was that a wink?

Heat? Sweet? Or was it something else entirely? 

If only tongues, men in love, and food bloggers had better vocabularies we could have it all described for us in pulchritudinous prose.  Nouns and adjectives can fight amongst themselves to be the subjects.  They can explain for us what it all means when a secret is revealed and a mystery is replaced with fact.  


"Of course!" But will it change anything?  Yes and no, certainly. It always does, sometimes.       

Initial desire is sated and gentility can restored again.  Now even the baby giggles and spoons once again can sink gently into their rich creamy vessels; lifting payloads northward to signal the tongues that they are ready to play once again. Over and over.  

Coffee begs to be served. 

Ahem.  I'd better stop there.

While the rest of you have been busy salting your food with varying grain coarseness and flakiness for some added  topical relevance,  I have been having a field day with the other shaker on the table, black pepper.  Last fall I unexpectedly tossed some crushed black pepper into a cherry crisp  and it rocked my culinary world.  I didn't add a ton mind you, but just enough to create a mild and somewhat mysterious heat to kick in.  My goal was to create interest without being obnoxious.  A trait I would wish for both salt and potential suitors to strive for these days.

Nevertheless, this decadent and rich chocolate dessert has been begging for equal treatment ever since that fateful day.  And as it turns out, what better time to add a little heat to chocolate than at Valentine's Day?  Think about it: if chocolate is to equal love, then what is love without a little heat to keep you warm? 

And, as if these pots aren't perfect enough for entertaining on love's special day you should also know that you can make them the night before.  Or two.

Peppery Chocolate Pot de Créme 

 

 

Peppery Chocolate Pot de Créme 

Meatballs: Vintage Style

 

"Hey buddy, these fancy meatballs are great! Thanks!"

"No problem. It was the least that I could do."

And I meant it. It really was the least that I could do.

 * * * 

My grandmother used to say "be friendly with the neighbors but don't be friends".   That pearl of wisdom  sums up our relationship with Brad, our neighbor to the right.  This may sound like callous advice but to others of you  might it rings practical.    My grandmother's own inseparable best friend (of over 30 years!) was her next door neighbor -- so I have no choice but to file this admonition of hers in the "do as I say, not as I do" section where I store the many of her colorful bon mots.

Had lived next door to Brad, she would have surely had an easier time taking her own advice.

Brad is an enigma.   A big boring enigma.  Had Gertrude Stein met Brad before she famously visited Oakland, I'm sure it would have been Brad forever described as "there isn't much there there."   It should count for something that the best word I can come up with to describe Brad is 'nondescript'.   'Enigma'  might imply that real time is spent figuring him out -- its not.   Quite the opposite...

Brad.

As I tell you all this right now I can't recall what he does for a living, how long he's lived next door to us, where his family is from, or what his hobbies might be.  I'm sure he has told us all this at one time in the last 10 years but just never really sinks.   On those rare occasions where we do speak I'm usually distracted by his overall plainness to remember anything about him.  His voice is a strange monotone and his clothes are absent of any personal style.    His new gray Honda (or is it a Subaru?) looks just like his old gray Honda (or is it a Subaru?)

A favorite past time of ours has been to project onto Brad all manner of personal stories and traits.   In the absense of any real personal Brad knowledge we discuss his imaginary family, his exciting and unusual hobbies and amusements, and even peccadilloes.   Over the years we have constructed an elaborate (yet entirely imaginary) back-story (and 'present-story') that not only explains the reasons for  his plainness but adds much needed splashes of color to the otherwise nondescript details of his life.

Suffice it to say that knowing too much about Brad would wreck all our fun!

So what does this have to do with meatballs?   Trust me. Don't I always get there?

Each winter Brad reaches out to us and sends us into a panic when he invites us to his annual 'big party'.   With any luck at all we won't be caught off guard by the invitation so we can tell him of our plans to be away for the weekend; and then rush inside as fast as we can and make plans to be away for that weekend.

"Oh no!  Why do we keep missing your party Brad?"

We have our reasons.

We feel very protective of the "Brad"  constructed over years of our creative and inventive storytelling.      Each bit of Brad knowledge would be a serious loss of creative capital requiring us to modify our stories to accommodate.

Several years ago we weren't quick enough on our feet to make excuses (either that or we weren't flush enough to afford a hotel) and we got stuck accepting Brad's invitation.

We are under no illusion as to Brad's motives for inviting us to his party. Its an old trick to invite your neighbors to your party to inoculate you from charges of inconsideration -- especially if you plan to unleash hoards of drunken twenty-somethings onto the neighborhood for a night.    Brad's parties are about  insanely loud music going until all hours, hundreds of people going in and out of the house, excessive drinking, dancing, and just loud screaming in the yard until four in the morning.

 "Don't your neighbors complain dude?"

"Why man?  I invited them!"

How had Brad managed to have over a 100 friends with nothing better to do that go to his house on a  Saturday night?  Who were these people and where did they come from?  God knows none of them had ever come over during the other 364 days of the year!  

As we made our way through the crowd looking for the bar  I could feel the pressure to re-script our tale 'o Brad.

One thing was immediately clear: Brad's friends weren't there for good food and drink.   The bar consisted solely of bottles of supermarket brand vodka; the kind found in large plastic bottles tagged with vaguely Russian sounding names -- fooling nobody.   The only food was a few opened bags of chips and a round supermarket crudite platter with carrots, celery and ranch dressing.  (This sat untouched in the kitchen.)  That was it.  Surely this explained the faint smell of vomit in the back yard everyone tried hard not to notice.    Perhaps these young people hadn't yet learned this important party requirement?

I would have felt sorry for Brad's guests who gave up their Saturday night for a party without food but to our surprise everyone was having a great time!     Admittedly, it was infectious.

Our sense of adventure took over and we stuck around to see what the draw was.    We never found the actual reason for the success of the party but then again most things about Brad were unexplained and had to be invented.

Brad obviously had more of a life than we gave him credit for even though many in attendance didn't even actually know him!   Maybe they were inventing stories too?  After an hour or so when enough people could give testimony that we had shown up we decided to leave the melee and return to our not so peaceful but much less crowded living room next door and wait it out.

We had an unexpectedly great time even though we didn't learn too much about Brad or how he had managed to attract so many people to a party.    Brad came over the next morning to apologize for the loud music and the vomit on our front walk.

"Well, thats ok.  You invited us."

So now we are a bit conflicted each year when we see Brad come up the front walk to invite us to his annual "big party".   Its not something we would want to do regularly but an hour or two can be a fun adventure exposing us to things we don't usually get to see up close.  Much like a trip to the zoo.

This year when Brad came up the walk and invited us I gave my usual knee jerk response in the affirmative:

"Sure, what can I bring?"

What could   I possibly bring to an event like Brad's?   Lysol perhaps?

"Food? Do you think you guys could bring some food?"

I really have to stop asking what I can bring.    In hindsight I think Brad was probably suggesting I bring an extra bag of Doritos as that is all he usually serves at his parties -- but I knew I would have to do just a bit more than that.   But how much more?

When I realized that if I could get a bit of food into this party there might be less vomit for Brad to clean up the next morning I saw this request as a public health issue.  I had an obligation.  

Then I remembered these meatballs.    Easy, cheap.  I don't even consider them real cooking but to Brad's guests they were gourmet.  Its all relative I suppose.   If you've never had steak, pre made Costco meatballs swimming in condensed soup tastes just fine!  And truthfully, these are doctored up enough so that if you didn't know better, you wouldn't know any better.

Brad was appreciative,  but to my way of thinking it was the least that I could do.  The very least.  But fun.

Meatballs: Vintage Style

 

 

Meatballs: Vintage Style

• 1 (38 ounce) package frozen swedish meatballs (precooked)
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 (10 ounce) can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 (10 ounce) can beef or veal broth
• 1 (12 ounce) jar beef gravy
• 1 tablespoon Kitchen Bouquet
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup red wine
• 1/4 grated parmesan cheese.

Saute one chopped onion in the olive oil until translucent and soft.  Add the can of cream of mushroom soup and broth and mix until combined.   Add the can of gravy and Kitchen Bouquet and mix until well combined.   Adjust consistency with more broth, salt, pepper and Kitchen Bouquet.   Add red wine and simmer gently for 20 minutes.    Add meatballs and simmer until meatballs are warmed through.   If mixture gets too goopy add more broth.      The longer you simmer the better as the onions will dissolve into the gravy.       You can transfer to a crock pot or warming dish to serve topped with a dusting of parmesan cheese.

(Note: I think I tripled this recipe and used one of those big bags of Costco meatballs.  Some where left over.  I'll use them next year.)