Cockles ‘n’ Mash.

The second main heading in the professional cook’s handbook I purchased a few weeks ago is “World Cuisines”, which is designed to familiarize the culinary professional with the key flavors of different food cultures.  The Americas get twenty pages.  Asian cuisines get fifty.  Europe gets about 40, with entries for Hungary, Portugal, Spain, and ‘Eastern

Mejillones con Chorizo y Epazote

This time, Carolyn sang to the mussels.  “What do mussels dream of/when they take a little mussel snooze?” Carolyn intoned, to the tune of some song from some movie I haven’t seen.  The guilt at eating bivalves – cute, cuddly bivalves! – had grown in her.  Lauren had scrapped her previous argument – What if

Morning-After Fish-and-Mussel Soup

Now, I trust you kept hold of that mussel broth, like I asked you to in the last entry.  This is one of those fridge-emptier recipes, one of those “Oh, damn it, what am I going to do with all this ingredient x” standbys. Often, after having confronted a tasty bowl of mussels in a

Garam Mussela.

“Do they eat mussels in India? They must.” I thought of what little I knew of Indian food, imagined Salman Rushdie eating prawns in Breach Candy (which has to be one of the greatest placenames I’ve ever read about), striped-shirted fishermen hauling wicker baskets of their catches, chewing paan, spitting, and cursing assiduously (I assume

Fun with Coconuts.

(or, Pumping Up Your Mussels) You’ll never see a can of coconut milk for under a dollar.  Not the good kind.  -Sure, there’s the Roland Classic kind, which sometimes sells for 99 cents, but that brand has guar gum in it, which artificially thickens and emulsifies the coconut milk.  A sign of good coconut milk,