Zuppa di Cozze

To be perfectly honest, we were going for a spaghetti with mussels, but Alessandro - the neighbourhood fishmonger - seemed to have a different measure of what are sufficient mussels for four portions of spaghetti. We could have asked him to remove some from the bag but the suggestion of a zuppa di cozze instead of spaghetti quickly convinced us otherwise. Clearly Alessandro has far better sales techniques than Anglo-Saxon supermarkets have trained us for.

There are endless variations of mussel soups across Italy, with perhaps one of the more popular ones being the impepata di cozze, which is essentially mussels with pepper, olive oil and garlic. In south-east Sicily however, a zuppa di cozze is far more often one with a tasty and slightly spicy tomato sauce.

The first step is of course to clean the mussels (getting rid of those that are open already), then simply place them in a pan with a lid and perhaps very very little water. The mussels quickly release their juice and in about 9-10 minutes should be open, which means they are ready.

 

At this point remove the liquid, pass it through a fine sieve to remove any impurities and place it apart. Also go through the mussels to remove any that have not opened. Now, we can start with the tomato sauce. For the sauce its pretty much what you prefer. We simply started with olive oil and some garlic, added a sauce we had prepared earlier (although canned tomatoes would work just fine) with a bit of basil. After the sauce was slightly bubbling we added half of the mussel juice and allowed it to reduce almost to half. Then we added the rest of the mussel sauce and two chilies and allowed to reduce some more.

Then add the mussels, some chopped parsley on top and you are ready. Healthy portions of bread to dip are a must. As a secondo some grilled calamari.