Cooking: Steamed Mussels

The CBS Early Show has a spot on the weekends called "Chef on a Shoestring" where famous chefs are given $40 and told to prepare a multi-course meal for 4. A few years ago they put out a cookbook containing many of the recipes.

I've tried a few of the recipes so far and they have been pretty good. One of my favorites is a recipe for steamed mussels. I had never tried to make a dish with mussels before but this was pretty easy. It reminded me of a dish I had in Brussels a few years ago. I guess mussels are very popular there, especially when served with fries and a good beer.

The recipe below is simple and takes 5 minutes to make. Serve over linguine or angel hair pasta to make a complete meal.

Steamed Mussels and Linguine
Adapted from "Chef on a Shoestring"

• 1 lb. mussels
• 1 large onion
• 1 large tomato
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup white wine

1. Clean the mussels
2. Dice the onion and garlic. Remove the seeds from the tomato and dice.
3. In a skillet or large pot, heat the oil and add all of the ingredients. Cover and steam for 5 minutes until the mussels open. Discard any unopened mussels.
4. Serve the mussels with the broth over pasta.
5. Enjoy!

Serves 2 as a meal.

Cooking: Creme Caramel

A few weeks ago I needed a French recipe for a French / Julia Childs themed potluck dinner. I've never really done any French cooking before, but a co-worker suggested a recipe for Creme Caramel (aka flan). She recommended a recipe found on the food blog Gratinee. Between the recipe (link) and this YouTube video (link), I was able to pull off a pretty successful Creme Caramel. My first test run ended in some very burnt caramel, but after that things went pretty smoothly.

Since then, I've made it twice more and both times it was a hit. Here are some photos from my last attempt. I make the creme caramel in individual ramekins because it looks better when serving it.


To server the creme caramel, you cut it out of the ramekin and flip it over onto a plate.