DIY - catch it, cook it, eat it: Mussels

Have you ever prepared seafood from a very beginning?

Ordinarily, people goes to shop and it's how it starts. But there are still some kind of food you can find in natural environment and we are not talking about fruits or vegetables:)
When you spent your summer vacation near the see, this can interest you for two reasons: activity and improving your cooking skills. 

Ready for recipe?

Start in the place similar to this: 

Ocean rocks during outflow

During outflow ocean reveals its bottom, where live many organisms. Mostly near the beaches they are not so big, because people kills them during accessing the water....:< But, when the outflow is really big or you are far away from crowded places you can find much bigger inhabitants of the sea. It is the same as this you can find in a shops but you just have to catch them. Mussels normally live attached to the rocks and to separate them you can use normal knife. Moreover, some of them drift in the water, because they were separated by strong flow during storm - you can also collect them, which is even easier. 

Colony of mussels on the rock

We advise you to collect only a big examples, because amount of work with small ones is incomparable with an amount of food from them. It is good to transport them in the bowl with ocean's water to keep them alive and fresh till the end...

Cleaning of mussels

Before cooking you have to thoroughly clean them. They grow in the sea attached to one place so other organisms as algae etc. can settle on them. With a knife you can clean them from other thrashes, then rinse them under cold tap water.  

Cleaned mussels

Before making a dish, you have to kill them. It seems brutal but it's not, either way all seafood you buy in shop have already been killed. To do so, you have to simply boil them, till all of them will open.

Boiling mussels

Here is my recipe for cooking them:

Ingredients:

• 1 med-sized onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 300 g of seafood
• 1 small pepper or 1 chili
• 2 tomatoes
• 1/2 glass of a white wine (most preferable port wine)
• Herbes de Provence
• olive oil
• juice of 1/2 lemon

Procedure:

Fry onion and garlic on a pan (using olive oil) till gold. Add chili/pepper and fry a bit, put on the pan chopped tomatoes. Add salt, pepper, minced pepper and Herbes de Provence (I used only some of them: oregano and rosmarin). When tomatoes are done, put the seafood. After 5 mins pour it with the white wine and lemon juice. Cook it for next 5 mins. Serve with rice or chips.   

Mussels on a plate

If you are not on the sea cost, you can do this food also, just buy some frozen seafood and do it same way. It always turns out good.

Mixture of frozen seafood

Serving suggestion

Bon Appetit!