Moules Marinières with a glass of Vouvray

We got a little taste of spring here on Saturday. It was sunny and in the low 60s in the middle of February. We had one small errand to run, but since we were out and about on a nice day, chose to add a couple more stops to get the ingredients for dinner. Bridget said she wanted mussels, so we picked up a bag of mussels, a bottle of white wine (Marc Bredif Vouvray) and a baguette, then hit up Caramel Patisserie for some dessert treats.

Moules Marinières is about as easy as home cooking can be. Mince a shallot and a couple of cloves of garlic, sweat them in a bit of melted butter in a large pot, add the mussels and toss gently to coat, then add about a cup of the white wine to the pot, cover, and let steam for 10 minutes or until all the mussels have opened up. Don’t eat any mussels that fail to open, or you will have a bad time. They are delicious, and I love to dip a toasted slice of baguette in the accumulated broth to enjoy all the flavor of the alliums, the butter, and the wine together. These mussels were fairly large and quite juicy on their own. Vouvray is my favorite white wine for making mussels, but you can certainly use a Sauvignon Blanc. I used the wine in the pot and enjoyed a couple of glasses of it over the course of the evening.

Somehow I’ve gotten it in my head that this is a dish for summertime, probably because the cooking doesn’t heat up the kitchen much, but they were good on a mild evening in mid-winter, too. Might have even been better on Sunday, when we got six inches of snow.