Sometimes the bread lands buttered side up. After many years of being a recipe cook, one who mostly cooked out of a book, magazine or newspaper, I finally began to trust my kitchen instincts—sometimes. And Saturday night it paid off.
It sounds like one of those cliches, market cooking. But we’d gone to the Tower Grove Farmers Market and Bob’s Seafood as part of our Saturday rounds, and I started figuring out what I was going to do for dinner when I saw fresh saffron tagliatelle at the Mangia Italiano stand.
What ended up on the dinner plate was a tangled golden mass of the pasta, shiny black mussels and nuggets of summer tomatoes, a big-flavor dish that turned out…well, it was wonderful. I’m stunned by how good it was. This is how I did it; a proper ingredient list is at the bottom of the recipe.
The heavy Dutch oven went over medium-high heat. When the pan was hot, I put in a glug of olive oil, and, when the oil was hot, four small cloves of garlic, slivered. When the garlic had just barely begun to brown, I poured in some white wine, perhaps three-quarters of a cup. (It happened to be a Simi Chardonnay.) As that came back to a boil, I added a bay leaf, a half-teaspoon of thyme, 4 threads of saffron (the woman who sold me the pasta said the flavor was delicate, and I like saffron, a flavor I was slow to appreciate in my youth), several grinds of black pepper and a smallish tomato roughly cut in half-inch dice. When the mixture came back to a boil, I tossed in 2 pounds of mussels. I covered the pan and cooked it until most of the mussels had opened, giving the pan a good stir a couple of times.
At this point, I stuck two plates in a warm oven, removed the mussels, still in their shells, to a metal bowl and stuck them in the oven, too, while I tossed a salad. I then brought the mussel liquid back to a boil. Tasting it, I decided it needed a little more salt and a pinch of red pepper flakes. I untangled the pasta, important when you’re working with the fresh kind, and added it to the liquid. Now, this is waaaay less liquid than you’d normally use to cook pasta. This is almost like making a risotto, letting the pasta absorb the broth. The pasta cooks four minutes, most of the broth was absorbed, and what was left thickened like a sauce. If I hadn’t had enough liquid, I would have added a little more hot water, just as one would with risotto.
I put the pasta on the warm plates, topped it with the mussels, and put a bowl on the table for the shells. Not a tidy meal to eat, but utterly delicious.
Served two of us.
about 3 Tbs. olive oil
4 small cloves garlic, in slivers
3/4 c. white wine
1 bay leaf
½ tsp. dried thyme
4 threads saffron
several grinds of black pepper
small-to-medium tomato, diced
2 lbs mussels
salt
red pepper flakes
½ lb. fresh saffron tagliatelle (must be fresh pasta, not dried)
-Ann