Christmas is just around the corner! And honestly, with the avalanche of meals and gatherings ahead, I love planning holiday menus in advance so I can get organized calmly. And at home they've already unanimously decided that this mussel cream I'm bringing you today deserves a place of honor on our table these days.
This dish has it all! It's very easy to prepare, we can make it the day before — which is so useful at this time of year — and best of all it's very economical and incredibly tasty! It really has nothing to envy from other seafood creams that are much more expensive.
And to make it perfect we just need it to be pretty... We'll achieve that with a nice decoration, like puff pastry figures, a bit of chives, drawing with the cream on top of the soup… and above all if we serve it in soup tureens as beautiful and special as these from Revol. I can’t wait to bring mine out for Christmas Eve dinner!!
Have I convinced you? Let’s go for the recipe!
Cocotte ronde Evolution Le Creuset, Pallarès carbon steel knife and Revol porcelain soup tureens
Ingredients (for 4 people)
- 1 Kg of mussels
- 200 ml of white wine
- 500-550 ml of water
- 1 onion
- 1 tomato
- 1 clove of garlic
- 100 g of bread (preferably from the day before)
- 200 ml of heavy cream
- Olive oil
Preparation
- We begin by preparing the mussels. We wash them well and remove the beards.
- Next we put the casserole on the heat with half of the white wine, just enough to cover the bottom of the pot, and add the mussels
- As they open we remove them from the pot and, as soon as we can handle them without burning ourselves, we remove the shells and set them aside.
- Using a strainer, we strain the mussel cooking liquid and set it aside.
- In the same pot we add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and heat over low heat.
- With a good knife we cut the onion into small dice, add it to the casserole and sauté until tender but without letting it brown.
- Once the onion is well softened we raise the heat and add the garlic sliced and fry until it takes on a golden color (careful not to burn it!).
- Next we add the grated tomato and cook over medium heat until the tomato's water has evaporated.
- Once the tomato's water has evaporated we add the rest of the white wine.
- We let it boil for about a minute so the alcohol evaporates.
- We add the mussels to the pot (except 4 that we will reserve for decoration), sauté for a minute and add the cooking liquid.
- We also add the water and cook for about 15 minutes over low heat.
- After this time we add the bread to the pot and let it rest a few minutes so it softens and is easier to blend.
- We add the cream and blend with an immersion blender or a countertop blender until obtaining a very smooth cream (although I like to pass it through the fine mesh strainer to make sure it’s very smooth and free of any beard fragments from the mussels that may have passed through).
- We serve in our best tableware and decorate with the reserved mussels and a little cream.
Revol porcelain soup tureens and Le Creuset Evolution round casserole
Notes
- For the decoration I added, besides the mussels, some puff pastry stars which, besides looking great, give the cream a delicious crunchy touch.
- To make them we only need a sheet of puff pastry, which we cut with a cookie cutter in whatever shape we like, brush with beaten egg and bake in a preheated oven at 190º-200º until golden, about 10 minutes approximately.
- The amount of water to add to the cream is indicative; it depends on how much mussel cooking liquid we obtain, but to give an idea the total (water + mussel cooking liquid) should be about 700 to 750 ml, depending on whether you want it more or less concentrated in flavor and more or less thick.
I hope you like the recipe and that you make room for it on your table this Christmas, because I promise it will surprise you, and I dare say it will become a classic in your homes as it has in mine.
