Well the good news is, Lolz overcame her sickness in time for a festive trip to York. Foodie highlights included Fat Rascals and afternoon tea at Betty's (those who are not of a northern persuasion or have never been to York will obviously have no idea what I'm talking about). The bad news is, I am now drastically behind in my attempt to get this challenge done before big ben strikes midnight on January 1st. I've got 15 meals to do in just 24 days. Since we still had many of the ingredients left over from last weekend, Lolz bravely agreed to give the Moroccan mussels a go (with a fresh batch of mussels of course) - how unlucky would you have to be to get food poisoning twice in 8 days?!
This is the second time I've cooked mussels in this challenge, the first being way back in January in the Flashy Fish Stew, and I remembered that back then I had to bin quite a lot of mussels because they failed the "mussel test" (that is, they don't close when you tap them). With that in mind I bought a full 2kg from the fishmongers, even though I was cooking just for the two of us, and it was lucky I did because, as expected, many were bad. Incidentally, I took far longer checking and cleaning the mussels than I did cooking the meal.
The sauce was much easier to make, just chucking everything in the liquidizer and eventually everything was cooking away nicely and the ciabatta toasties were on the griddle. The mussels were great - the sauce was rich and spicy (a bit too spicy for Lolz) and the toasties were good for mopping up the sauce. The token salad however, was a bit pathetic, although it probably didn't help that I used the lettuce that had been sitting in the fridge for a week.
So it must have been a resounding success you are probably thinking? Well it would have been if Lolz hadn't been vomiting all over the bathroom a few hours later, as we came to the conclusion that she may have some kind of allergy. Still, she managed to get a few days off work as a result, which for me would count as a successful evenings work.
Lolz (pre-vomit) gave the dish 9/10. Difficulty rating 4/10 (for all the mussel prep).
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