mussels

Asparagus and fennel are strange ingredients to include in the cooking broth for mussels. I do not recommend them. Best, I think, to keep it simple: shallots, parsley, butter, wine.  My thinking here is that I do love wine cooked with butter and nearly anything with it. I like it as much as the mussels themselves. I was considering it a kind of soup, not just a steaming broth, and I wanted extra for later. And I wanted to experiment. 

Half this amount of butter was used, two ounces. But the entire bottle of wine was included. That is probably excessive for two pounds of mussels. 

Ordinarily tomatoes would be cooked with the broth, usually canned tomatoes, but my preference is to have them raw or barely cooked. So these were kept separate. 

mussels with white wine

Not shown, butter, quite a lot, almost a stick, say, six ounces. White wine, I forget what kind, the airline type where one cup comes in a bottle, I could look but I can't be arsked. Let's say generic.

Brined the mussels this time. It hardly helped any if at all. Caused the buttered wine to go all salty. Couldn't enjoy the broth like it was mussely soup like last time, and that's a no-good, low-down, dirty rotten wasteful shame that is.

But isn't my bread nice? It's sort of a careless brioche, in that its' fortified with lots of butter, milk, and eggs. I could make that stuff blindfolded. Mind you the kitchen would be a gigantic mess and I'd risk burning down the building, but I could do it. It's 1/4 whole wheat flour I milled myself. The next time I'm going to use a higher percentage of whole wheat since that commercial yeast is so powerful it can easily do the heavy lifting, and include flour more coarsely milled resulting in a denser and more interesting texture, I'm imagining.

mussels

bacon

onion

garlic

butter

thyme (Not the right herb, but I don't care. Try chervil, parsley)

dry white wine

Mmmm. Put 'em in a pot. Put on a lid. Steam. Check to see if they're opened. Finger-food. I ate all two and a half pounds, on account of when it comes to mussels, I'm a total pig. I actually like the cooked buttered wine a lot better than the same wine in a glass. I'm totally no-class that way.