Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [122]
The sauce can be made in advance, using a blender. A processor can also be used, but you will get a finer, more coherent result in the blender. You can also pound the whole thing by hand.
Pour a little water over the bread, squeezing it with your fingers and adding more water to make a soft paste. Put the garlic and tahina into the blender and whizz at top speed. Gradually add the walnuts and the bread paste in alternate spoonfuls. The mixture will need lubricating from time to time, so add a tablespoon of the vinegar and splashes of oil occasionally – you may not need all the oil. Finally, season with the rest of the vinegar, salt, black pepper and cayenne.
Shell the mussels and toss about half of them with the parsley. Cut the tomatoes into strips, or dice them and season with salt and pepper. Cut the pitta in half across and then down, then slit the sides so that you have eight triangles from each one.
To assemble the dish, which should be served at room temperature, put a pool of sauce on to each of eight plates. Arrange the mussels overlapping the sauce slightly in a pile, plain and parsley mixed, add the tomato and two wedges of pitta – serve the rest of the pitta in a basket.
PASTA WITH MUSSELS AND ORANGE
Mussels with a cream sauce*, or a tomato sauce*, are often served with pasta. This is a lighter version that tastes as fresh as it looks. If you want a more dramatic dish – and are in the habit of making your own pasta – use squid ink to colour it black, otherwise you can use white or green fettucine or both together.
Serves 6
1½ kg (3 lb) mussels, scrubbed and opened by method 1
2 oranges
about 700 g (1½ lb) fresh pasta
125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt, pepper
Open the mussels as directed, discard the shells and strain and reserve the liquor. Remove threads of orange peel with a zester or cut thin strips of zest and slice them into shreds. Squeeze one of the oranges.
Cook the pasta in salted water in the usual way. Melt the butter in a pan, add the orange juice, the zest and the mussel liquor. Simmer 2–3 minutes. Just before you drain the pasta, add the mussels to this sauce to heat them through briefly. Toss with the pasta, the parsley and plenty of pepper. Serve straightaway.
SALADE À LA BOULONNAISE
Channel ports of the French coast are no more to travellers these days than a minor episode of impatience on long summer journeys. As one drives away thankfully, it is startling to think that our great-grandparents might have waited nine days in such places for a wind; up to six weeks, if they could afford it, for a calm. They might even have chosen to live there for business, for economy on small pensions – and for escape. Some of them are buried under hideous tombstones in the cemetery on the steep Lille road out of Boulogne, which looks across the sea to England: ‘beloved wife of…’, ‘leader of the Methodist community of this town’. If you then go, as we once did, from the cemetery to the garish duty-free booths near the Gare Maritime, it is hard to think that Boulogne has its virtues. There is the blue lung-raking air of course; but also the mild harengs saurs which are cured here, and simple fresh food à la Boulonnaise, with mussels.
The best of these Boulogne dishes, and to my mind one of the best of all salads, is this combination of sweet plump mussels and waxy potato, dressed with a fine olive oil vinaigrette and parsley.
Serves 6
1 kg (2 lb) waxy potatoes, preferably Desirée
5 tablespoons white wine
6 chopped shallots
1 good sprig of thyme
6 good sprigs of parsley
plenty of black pepper
2½–3 kg (5–6 lb) mussels, opened by method 2
about 8 tablespoons well-seasoned vinaigrette
extra chopped parsley for garnishing
Wash then boil the potatoes in their skins. When cooked, peel and slice them. Meanwhile put wine, shallots, thyme, parsley, pepper and scrubbed mussels in a large pan, and open as directed. Discard the shells, put the mussels in a dish