More Seafood Chowder

All right. So I've been to parties where everyone brings their own meat and you just barbecue. But only in the Maritimes could you go to a party where everyone pitches in to buy over 10 pounds of mussels. But these weren't going to be just boring old steamed mussels if I had anything to say about it. It wasn't hard to convince our fellow party goers to let us make the sauce for the mussels.

The sauce we picked was from a recipe for Moules Mernier. All it consisted of was a whole bottle of white wine, the same amount of water, chopped parsley, and about 8 cups of finely shredded onions and shallots. Heated through and then cooked for about 20 minutes, we then strained the sauce and were left with a delicious broth ready for buckets of mussels and a quart full of cream.

After the party, once everyone had forgotten about the food and moved on to other things, I packed up a pot full of leftover mussels and some of the broth. Once we got home, we simply added a few packages of mixed seafood - once again an advantage only available to coastal residents - diced potatoes, carrots, celery and some chopped parsley. The ensuing soup was good but not great. We'd forgotten to take into account that the broth had reduced at the party and therefore it had become way too salty. Oh well, at least now I know that those Belgians really had the right idea. Beer and mussels...mmmm!