Cooking mussels - Rick Stein

[tobes01]

Just seen Rick Stein on BBC1 Saturday Kitchen. He was in France, cooking fresh caught mussels, which were quite small. The technique was much like Ray's but with a nice twist: the fishermen took a piece of chipboard and put a nail in the middle. They balanced the mussels around that, hinge side up, in a tight arrangement until they had a few hundred on there.

They then lit a fire on top using newspaper, and covered it in dried pine needles, which they kept topping off (no mention of for how long, but Ray quotes 20 minutes on his show). When they were ready, they used a piece of cardboard to fan the ashes off again (cunning!).

Got to try this one some time. :)

Should be available on iPlayer later today, it's about 20 minutes into the show.

[tobes01]

...and coming up shortly - Valentine Warner cooking signal crayfish...

[DavidJT]

Sounds interesting. Wonder if Its on iplayer?
But chipboard? Isn't that full of glue? Doesn't sound so healthy.

[Humpback]

Just watched on IPlayer. Tobes01 thanks for the pointer.
Alan

[Neumo]

I jhave seen it done on a TV show where they did it in the sand on a beach, with a file built over the top & then it was all covered in sand to cook. The problem with that method was that you got bits of sand inside shells as they opened up

Doing it this way sounds good if the wood board & the newspaper dont have any nasty chemicals in it. I have always wanted t give this a go so the next time I see some Mussels I may be tempted.