Eastington@Paddington

from The River Cafe Cookbook (page 96) by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers

• garlic and parsley fried in EVOO
• fresh plum tomatoes (I substituted the canned Mutti San Marzano) which I then slowly reduced down for about 30 minutes until paste like with 3 small red chillies with seeds (6 x more than recipe)

• live mussels steamed in a little EVOO and some Clare Valley riesling (lid on pot to get all the mussels steamed) then taken off the heat, let cool and remove the mussels from the shells reserving the mussels juice.

• There was a lot of mussels juice (each of the mussels was full of salt water) so I reduced this down by over 50% then added it to the “tomato paste.” Brought the mixture to boil and taken off the heat
• Add the mussel meat and basil (season to taste. You don’t need salt as the sea water is salty enough, but more pepper, yes)
• stir in the cooked pasta (San Remo dried Linguine) (well drained as you don’t need any more water)
• served with EVOO and topped with parsley.

It was delicious! (and not as messy to eat sans the mussel shells)