Currabinny Cooks: Our favourite shellfish recipes

Coastal restaurants and pubs all across the country sell mussels and chips by the truckload in summer. Advanced food safety practices mean that it is very unlikely you would come across ‘bad’ or contaminated shellfish at any time of the year so rest easy.

Mollusc aquaculture has one of the lowest impact production methods of any food industry. There’s no land use at all, no freshwater use, no fertiliser use — in fact, they clean up the surrounding water.

Shellfish farms are usually in coastal waters, where there’s plenty of space. Consider those factors together, and it looks like it’s more environmentally friendly to get your calories from mussels than from veggies and beans.

Mussels are lazy creatures by nature, attaching themselves in clusters to whatever comes their way with ‘byuss’ (numerous threads produced by the mussel itself), then they just stay there and filter in the food-rich seawater. Although many methods are used in modern mussel cultivation, the basic principle of growing mussels is simple - give them something to attach themselves to in food-rich water. 

They grow wild, in or near estuaries and bays, and use a filter system to feed on plankton, taking in up to 45 litres of seawater a day to nourish themselves. Depending on the type of plankton they feed on, their flesh is white or yellow in tone.

Instead of giving you three different recipes for mussels, we decided to give you our favourite and simplest method for making a traditional ‘moules mariniere’. With this a delicious brown bread, which we always have on the side along with some lovely new potatoes.

Moules Mariniere 

In our opinion there is no better recipe for mussels than this French classic. This is a staple of Normandy cooking and can whipped up in minutes yet we associate it more with restaurant eating.

Legend has it that the dish actually originated from an Irishman named Patrick Walton, who was shipwrecked on the Normandy coast in 1235. Having decided to stay and catch seabirds for a living, he erected wooden poles on the beach and strung nets from them. When mussels started growing on the poles he realised it would be easier to produce mussels than catch seabirds and thus bouchot mussel farming was born.

Ingredients:

• Around 2kg of fresh Irish mussels
• 150ml of dry white wine
• 50g butter
• 2 shallots, finely sliced
• 4 bay leaves
• 6-8 sprigs of thyme
• 2-4 tablespoons of cream
• Handful of fresh parsley, chopped
• Sea salt and black pepper 

Method:

To prepare the mussels, Place them in a large bowl in the sink. Run the cold tap over them, scrubbing away any hairy bits or barnacles. Submerge them completely in the water. Any mussels that float, chuck them. Any mussels that have already opened also need to be discarded.

Get a shallow casserole or medium sized frying pan, stovetop on a medium high heat. Pour in the wine and bring to the boil. Add the shallot, butter, bay leaves, sprigs of thyme and a little seasoning.

Bring back to the boil and then add the mussels. Cover with a lid and leave to cool for around 3 minutes until the mussels open. Take the lid off and stir in the cream and scatter over the chopped parsley.

Serve the mussels from the pot in bowls with plenty of the cooking liquor.

Macroom brown soda 

Could there be anything more Irish and more down to earth than a classic soda bread using Cork's finest wholemeal flour from Waltons' mill in Macroom? Serve thick slices of this with salty butter alongside the mussels.

Ingredients:

• 180g plain flour
• 340g Macroom extra-course wholemeal flour
• 2 teaspoons bread soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 575ml good quality buttermilk
• 70g Macroom oatmeal 

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Butter a loaf tin.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flours, bread soda, salt and oatmeal to combine, make a well in the center.

Whisk together the egg and the buttermilk and pour into the dry mix. Using your hand as a claw, mix the ingredients together in a circular motion until combined.

Pour into the loaf tin and bake in the oven for 40 – 50 minutes. Check with a skewer, if it comes out clean the bread should be done but make sure to tap the bottom, listening for that hollow sound just in case.

Cool on a wire rack.

Baby potatoes with charred spring onions 

Fries are the classic accompaniment for mussels but the new potatoes are so good right now that we decided to pair ours with this simple, yet delicious combination of buttery potatoes with green, peppery spring onions and fresh dill.

Ingredients:

• 12 bunches of spring onions, green ends discarded
• 600g new potatoes, washed
• 100g butter
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• Handful of fresh dill, roughly chopped
• Sea salt and black pepper 

Method:

Wash the new potatoes in cold water and put them in a pan. Cover with water and add plenty of sea salt. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 – 25 minutes until a knife can go through them with just a little resistance.

Drain the cooked potatoes and add to a large mixing bowl and crush roughly with a fork. Add butter to pot and stir around along with the crushed garlic, into the potatoes and season them with a little sea salt and black pepper.

Drizzle a griddle pan with olive oil over a medium high heat. Add the spring onions with a small pinch of sea salt and cook, turning often until they have all wilted down and have started to char. Remove from the griddle, into the pot with the potatoes. Place the potato and spring onions in a nice serving bowl and garnish generously with the chopped dill.