Listen I'm gonna be here the next couple of months. Chop it up, press down like that.
I haven't got a clue what I'm supposed to be doing. We need to get our stuff on, that is what
I'm talking about. Twist like that, give it a ruddy good
spanking. Perfect, just having a moment.
So I'm going to do a beautiful dish with mussels and the arbroath smokies.
Mussels, to start off with these are one of the
most ethical fish that you can actually eat and buy these days. You can get them
in the supermarkets. We should all be eating way way more of these and all you
need for this is actually about half a smokie. Okay I'm just gonna pull apart
like that. So I want one side of a smokie and the sort of the sweetness, the flavour
and the smoke of that one side is enough to really affect the all-around flavour
of the whole dish. When you get your mussels, I mean you can get your
fishmonger to clean them, they're kind of living on ropes like this. It almost
looks like wire wool. What you need to do, quite simply, is just pull it
slowly and then off. First off chop up two leeks, two sticks of celery and a
bunch of fresh parsley. A quick glug of olive oil. You want the pan screaming hot,
then the veggies can get cooking with a generous knob of butter. Butter and
leeks, best friends, and now for that gorgeous smoky fish. I'm actually gonna
put this at the bottom of the pan, because I want that flavour to permeate
every last bit of this dish. Go in with the parsley and go in with literally
loads of these mussels, like that. Go in with a good old slosh of whiskey, this is a homage to
our native brothers so it would be rude not to. Whiskey and seafood, there you go.
It'll just fire up and then it will burn down. To cook the whiskey's beautiful, you
get all those sort of scents and sort of perfumes from the barrel and all that
sort of stuff so that's really really good. Then kiss those shells with about 200
millilitres of double cream, just pour it in.
I'm gonna give it a last stir up. To help me, I'm gonna nick a trick from our arbroath
smokie man. I'm just going to get a nice old sort of cloth. You want to put a lid on
here now, I haven't got one so I'm just gonna literally submerge it into some
water and I'm gonna put that on here, which probably won't work,
but it is all I've got, so imagine that was a lid okay, use your imagination.
These will cook for a couple of minutes till the shells open, which gives me
enough time to get started on the sourdough. I want to kind of almost cut
into it like pac-man. Just put big old chunks on the grill and chop up a sweet
garnish of parsley and celery leaves. Let's check on this toast.
Oh yeah it's toasting nicely, look at that. When that toast comes off there,
nice and hot, just give it a little rub with some butter like that, use a smaller
bit of butter, but I'm outside. This is proper Huckleberry Finn stuff. This dish
is done when the mussels are open and the liquor is boiling which is about now,
because I can kind of hear it. If you have a little look inside here now.
Look at that.
Oh yeah! Yeah that's good. You know what I'm gonna put a bit more of that smokie
in there, let's call it one smokie. Flake a few more bits of that in. You'd be
amazed at the amount of juice that comes out of mussels, like pints of the stuff,
and that's the good stuff. I mean the juice is almost as good as the shellfish
itself. If you've never had mussels before, you're missing out. And then just
pour that all over again and the idea of course is that you're picking the
mussels, eating the meat. You got this beautiful broth, that you can stick these
toasts into and there you have got a brilliant brilliant dish. Beautiful.