Whisk Wednesdays—Mouclade (Mussels with Wine and Cream Sauce)

I love mussels and have enjoyed more than one all-you-can-eat mussel bar. They're easy to prepare and only need a good sauce to transcend them from bland to spectacular. This Mouclade with its simple herbal sauce thickened with crème fraîche does just that. But, you must use crème fraîche, the secret ingredient.

More common Mouclade recipes contain curry, and this idea is scribbled in the margin of my cookbook for next time.

"Purists may frown, but curry powder is an essential ingredient in mouclade, one of the most popular mussel dishes served on the Brittany coast".
— Stephanie Alexander, cook, restaurateur, and food writer

Mouclade is a specialty dish from the Poitou-Charentes and Bordeaux regions in France.

"Tradition has it that the farming of mussels in the Vendée, south of the Loire, dates back to 1237, when an Irish sea captain was shipwrecked on the coast. He managed to swim ashore and set bird traps in the water. The sticks supporting the nets were soon covered with huge moules (mussels), much larger than those growing on the rocks. Even now, mussels are cultivated on stakes in much the same way."
— Anne Willan in The Country Cooking of France

The mussels are steamed in a bath of butter, onions, shallots, and wine. After straining the sauce and setting the mussels aside, the sauce is reduced a bit. Then crème fraîche is added along with a sprinkle of thyme. Just like that, you have a one-pot meal that you could easily serve at a fancy dinner party.

Recipe

Serves 6

3 pounds mussels
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large onion, chopped fine
1 large shallot, chopped fine
½ cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Freshly ground pepper
½ cup crème fraîche or heavy cream (I would use sour cream)
1 sprig fresh thyme or ¼ teaspoon dried
You can find the recipe for Mouclade (Mussels with Wine and Cream Sauce) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Serve with Muscadet.

Tasting Notes
Pull out the mussel with a fork or an empty mussel shell. Scoop up as much sauce as the mussel will hold. Taste. Repeat. Finish the remaining sauce in your bowl with a fresh slice of baguette. Lick your fingers. Help yourself to another bowl.

Next Class
• Huîtres Chaudes au Muscadet (Poached Oysters with Muscadet Sabayon Sauce) pages 383-384

Links
• Billy Bi (Mussel Soup)
• Video: Mussels Provencal (Steamed Mussels in a White Wine Sauce)
• Times Online: Mouclade
• Bitten: The Mussel Challenge

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $1,244.26 + $18.33 = $1,262.59
($3.05 per serving)

Butter used so far: 11 pounds, 14.5 tablespoons

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::Whisk Wednesdays::
We're cooking our way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, we try to find a suitable substitution. Find out more here.

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