mussel cream

Christmas is just around the corner! And the truth is that, with the avalanche of meals and gatherings coming up, I love planning my holiday menus ahead of time so I can get organized with ease. And at home they have already unanimously decided that this mussel soup that I bring you today deserves a place of honor on our table these days.

This dish has it all! It is very easy to prepare, we can prepare it the day before, which is very useful at this time of year, and the best thing of all is that it is very cheap and incredibly tasty! It has nothing to envy of other seafood creams that are much more expensive.

And for it to be perfect, all we need is for it to be pretty... Well, we can achieve that with some cool decoration, such as some puff pastry figures, a bit of chives, making a drawing with the cream on top of it... and especially if we serve it in some pretty and special soup tureens like these from Revol . I can't wait to get mine out for Christmas Eve dinner!!

Have I convinced you? Let's get to the recipe!

Le Creuset Evolution round cocotte , 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 liquid cream
• Olive oil

Elaboration

1. We begin by preparing the mussels. We wash them well and remove the beards.
2. Next, we put the cocotte on the heat with half of the white wine, just enough to cover the bottom of the casserole, and add the mussels.
3. As they open, we remove them from the pan and, as soon as we can handle them without burning ourselves, we remove the shells and set them aside.
4. Using a strainer , we filter the water from the mussels and set aside.
5. In the same saucepan, add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and heat over low heat.
6. Using a good knife, cut the onion into small cubes, add it to the cocotte and fry until it is tender but without taking on any colour.
7. Once the onion is well sautéed, turn up the heat and add the sliced ​​garlic and fry until it turns a golden color (be careful not to burn it!).
8. Next, add the grated tomato and cook over medium heat until the water from the tomato evaporates.
9. Once the water from the tomato has evaporated, add the rest of the white wine.
10. We let it boil for about a minute so that the alcohol evaporates.
11. Add the mussels to the pan (except 4 that we will reserve for decoration), fry for a few minutes and add the cooking water.
12. We also add the water and cook for approximately 15 minutes over low heat.
13. After this time, add the bread to the pan and let it rest for a few minutes so that it softens and is easier to crush.
14. Add the cream and blend with a hand blender or a glass blender until you obtain a very fine cream (although I like to pass it through a ball strainer to make sure it is very smooth and without any remains of mussel beards that may have been strained).
15. We serve it on our best tableware and decorate it with the mussels we had reserved and a little cream.

Le Creuset Revol porcelain soup tureens and Evolution round cocotte

Grades

• For decoration, in addition to the mussels, I added some puff pastry stars which, in addition to being very attractive, give the cream a delicious crunchy touch.
• To prepare them we only need a sheet of puff pastry, which we will cut with a cookie cutter in the shape we like best, brush with beaten egg and bake in a preheated oven at 190º-200º until golden, approximately 10 minutes.
• The amount of water that we have to add to the cream is indicative, it depends on how much water we get from cooking the mussels, but to give us an idea the total (water + mussel cooking water) should be about 700 or 750 ml, depending on whether we want it more or less concentrated in flavour 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 you that it will surprise you, and I dare say that it will become a classic in your homes as it has already done in mine.