It was another day for Fish Man to visit and I bought a kilo of mussels. Such a bargain food, so easy to prepare, and such a wonderful taste.
I have been inspired by some of the recipes posted by Olives and Artichokes here and here and often make a tomato based soup version, as you can see here.
Today, I decided to use up some of my bacon from the UK, although I could have used lardons or jamon instead.
Time for a wash and brush up...
After cleaning my mussels, I lightly fried in olive oil two cloves of crushed garlic, one onion fairly finely chopped and 4 rashers of chopped bacon.
When these had all softened I added a glass of white wine and simmered for about 5 minutes before adding the mussels and a couple of tablespoons of chopped parsley and putting the lid on.
A few minutes later the mussels had all opened, so I took the pot off the heat, stirred in 100ml of single or pouring cream and that was it.
I served it in big bowls with spoons and crusty bread to soak up all the garlicky, creamy juices. ¡Muy rico!
I realised tonight that a month had flown past since we planted our vegetable “plugs” this year. We´re catching up as we´ve has plenty of rain followed by sunshine and a few misty evenings, which the plants seem to love!
Our herbs are doing well, apart from my parsley and cilantro (coriander) which are still looking a bit sad.
I´ve let the sage flower as I think it looks so pretty. I sometimes deep fry the large leaves in very hot olive oil for a few seconds and sprinkle with coarse sea salt as a little nibble with almonds and olive…and wine, of course!
Sage flowers
The mint is going crazy…these were the stragglers which I had to pull up later.
Rampaging Mint
I´ve also let the chives go to seed as the flowers are also lovely in salads.
Delicious chives...great for potato salad
The basil is almost ready for the first batch of pesto.
Fragrant Basil
We´ve got plum tomatoes.
A Future Sun Dried Tomato
We´ve got a “wild” tomato which has sprung up from a leftover seed from a squashed tomato from last year. It has such a desire to live, we´ve let it do its own thing!
Born to be wild....!
We have some (very) bitter salad leaves and the delicious chard. The celery tucked in there is slow to get going, but we´ll let it take its time.
Green Leaves and Bitter Leaves
Tomatoes, beans and the little muscat vines.
View down to my kitchen window
We´ve got rocket seedlings (must plant some more though)
Aaah....less than a week old
The first of the runner beans should be ready to pick in a few days
Teeny, tiny beans
The onions are doing well too
Onions in neat rows!
We´ve got long thin green peppers and large bell peppers – but we can´t remember which are which. We´ll soon find out!
Which one are you then?
Cucumber flowers
Grown from last year´s seeds
The aubergine flowers are so pretty – wish they´d hurry up as I love aubergines (eggplant!)
Hurry Up! Hurry Up!
Dwarf French beans (yellow and green) which we only planted a week ago
Not quite Jack & The Beanstalk, but working on it!
And finally, radish seedlings…not long now!
Peppery and Pretty!
As I said, we´re a little behind this year because of the very wet spring that we had, but we´re happy with progress so far and already dreaming of grilled vegetables, salads and bunches of grapes. Happy growing to you all!
So in 2016 I turned 50. I was in Italy for my 21st, 30th and 40th. To keep this birthday tradition going I always knew I'd be in Italy for my 50! This blog starts with my 5 week adventure in Puglia but my love affair with Italy continues.....
Chica Andaluza 