Hello Food Tubers
My name's Gill Meller. I'm here at Oxwich point
on the Gower Peninsula a fantastic part of South wales
Andrew, hello. Nice to meet you. Andrew's going to be taking me out, he is a local
forager
we're going to be looking for mussels down this coastline we're gonna be cooking a
beautiful mussel, periwinkle and bacon stew
sounds good. So let's go.
The reason I've come out today with Andrew is because he's an expert local forager
He knows the area, he knows the types of seaweeds that are
growing, and he knows exactly what's safe to eat and what's not
There we go, perfectly fresh mussels, nice. They should be completely close like that if they
are they good
the sea food on the Gower Peninsula is absolutely amazing
The quality of the water is very important crystal-clear
the mussels grow because they're taking in all the algae from the water
filtering it and that's what makes them taste so good. Well there's some pepper dulse
here we can have a look at
which is one of my favorite seaweeds actually, in terms of flavour I think you'd
be hard pushed to find a seaweed with more flavour than this. Really?
Can that be eaten raw? Yeah, yeah. It's truffle like. Truffley. Yeah.
Instantly truffley. Really is. These little sea snails
were actually periwinkles quickly cooked and
taken out with a little stick. Yeah. In your mouth.
Just a thorn or a pin. Yeah. okay so we've only been out about half an hour and we've already got
half
a pot full of goodies. Mussels, periwinkles and pepper dulse
Not bad is it? For just a short bit of foraging
So I'm sat here in this amazing patch of woodland
got a lovely fire in front of me, this is an amazing spot
right so down here I've got a bowl of mussels, wild mussels have quite alot of barnacles on
them
they need to be scraped off because they're actually living
organisms and when you cook your mussels the barnacles fall off
into into the base of your pan. All you want to do is take the back of your knife
and just scrape them off, any stubborn ones, you can
give a little tap like this and they should just fall off
The periwinkles are just going to need a quick wash so they can
be added to the mussels and then the pepper dulse which has that
wonderful trufflely flavour, we'll wash seperately
that's actually gonna be a garnish for the dish so we're not gonna cook at all with
the
the rest the the stuff it's really important that they have
a thoroughly good clean
So we're taking one onion peeled and thinly sliced take a couple of cloves of garlic
and then just here we've got some lovely bacon
local Welsh smoked bacon 4 or 5 rashers
and just roughly chop them up 15 grams of butter
butter goes in and then this lovely smoked bacon goes straight on top of that
move those around
I think it's nice to add the bacon
first because you get there pork fat rendering through
you want to see a little bit color on it just starting to crisp up around the
edges before you add the garlic and the onions
we want them to soften down quite quickly
start to move those around
so that's looking really good it's smelling absolutely amazing
we're probably ready to put the mussels and periwinkles in now
pinch of salt, a good pinch of black pepper, tend to do it by hand
instead of chucking them all in because there can be a little bit of grit at the bottom
the pan's lovely and hot
so as soon as the mussels and periwinkles go in, give them a good stir
so this is the point that you want to add your wine or your cider
or in this case beer lovely Welsh
light ale. I went and picked it up from a microbrewery just down the road actually
and this one stood out actually, perfect for
this kind of dish, it's got a light delicate flavour
not too deep, not too rich, the mussels will come through
It will work very well, so we want a good healthy glass of the beer
these mussels are going to be ready in about two minutes max
check them after one, if they're all open straight out the pan and into bowls
wow yeah, they are looking good
30 seconds more and these are going to be ready just right now
is there point where the dulse goes in
good old pinch in because it's very strong don't want it to over
power the dish and that will just soften
and perfume the mussels
for the last few seconds of cooking
looking good, super
wow something smells good. How you doing? good. They're just
just beautiful they're looking quite meaty aren't they? They're looking great lovely
deep yellow colour, it's always nice in a mussel. Exactly what we're looking for
Bit of smoked bacon, a little bit of garlic. So these mussels and periwinkles are looking
absolutely delicious if you're interested in cooking
more recipes like this then check out the River Cottage channel
loads recipes on there, loads of lovely things. Shall we try these
I think we should, the great thing about mussels is
they come with their own little serving spoons, it's fantastic.
I like that, very nice. Full of flavour, you get that subtle flavour of
the pepper dulse as well yeah
comes through kind of earthyness. It does. What a wonderful forage plate of food
Well those mussels are absolutely delicious
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thanks very much and see you later
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