Pasta with Mussels and Saffron

Watching renown chefs and hosts describing their BEST THING EVER ATE in short videos for US’s most amazing meals and treats is what we are looking out for after every show in the food network Asia. We will normally continue sitting in front of the TV, listening eagerly to what they recommend. Each time, our enjoyment ended with a sigh and a motivated urge to visit US as soon as possible. But the earliest possible date will only be 2012. Can’t it be this year? Nope, we need to study. How about next year? Nope, it’s our final years, plus we need to have 3 weeks holiday in a row to travel to US.

The best thing watching them in this series is to learn the way they use a vast amount of vocabularies in describing their food, other than dying in jealousy, i.e. walk and dream about xx..., xx is your Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday dinner..., this xx just fall off the bone, you don’t need your knife, just throw it away..., citrusy olive oil over chocolate ice cream, hmm... etc. We can’t summarise everything here but we are especially enlightened by Danny Boome’s pronunciation of ‘sauce’ when he described his obsession-over-the-twice for linguini with clams and mussels in saffron broth by Tree restaurant in New York city. In this clip, he said that: Basically you can put anything with pasta and seafood with anything, but it is the SAUCE~~ that make it so delicate, simple yet was deliciously crafted in a way that he could order it twice in a row... What a compliment!

A new way in describing the pasta, make us wondering… But it is the SAUUCCE~~ that keep ringing in our heads until we had a big laugh for the SAUUCCE~~. Since we have some leftover saffron from the paella that we made last time, why not use it for creating the SAUUCCE~~?

So here we are, experimenting with the sauce~~ Yummy sauce~~

Recipe

Serve 2

250g Pasta – cooked according to instructions on its packaging, till slightly undercooked.

1 cup of white wine

A dash of saffron

A few cloves of garlic

1 Tbsp of butter

Olive oil

150-200g of Mussels, cleaned, pulled their beards out (follow here for a detailed tutorial for cleaning mussels.)

Salt and pepper

Finely chopped Chinese parsley

Method

1. With some olive oil and butter, fry garlic slightly to release its aroma.


2. Toss the mussels around in the garlic butter and coat the shells with the fat. Be careful not to be too rough. Pour in pasta, then the wine and saffron. Stir them lightly until the pasta marry with the sauce.


3. With lid, cook for 5 minutes, until all of the mussels open. Be careful not to cook the mussels for too long, as they will become tough and grainy if overcooked.


4. After 5 minutes, turn off the heat, sprinkle in parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Be gentle on salt as the mussels are quite salty naturally. You can omit this if you prefer less salty.