Darice de Cuba

This week I was engrossed again in making a “perfect” steamed mussels. I had an old friend come over for dinner and I make mussels about once a year so I don’t get to practice it a lot. After consulting my sisters boyfriend who is a restaurant cook and reading many recipes I settled for the following recipe;

Steamed Mussels or Moules Marinières

• 2kg of fresh mussels
• 1 small white onion finely chopped
• 1 leek stalk cut in rings, discard green leaves
• 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
• 1 carrot diced
• a handful flat parsley chopped
• unsalted butter
• olive oil
• 1 1/3 cup of white wine, preferably a Pinot Blanc

Make sure to use only mussels that are closed, rinse them in cold water and give them a good shake.

I never measure butter and olive oil, but if you are unsure there are plenty of recipes that say how much as those ingredients are standard. My motto is “don’t hold back on the butter”.

Use a deep pan, any will do as long as the mussels fit in it and there still rest some space for when they all open up.

Add butter and olive oil, add the onion, garlic, leek, carrot and cook until fragrant. Add the parsley and mix well. Add all the mussels and pour the wine over the mussels. Put the lid on the pan and let the liquids boil while steaming the mussels. Keep checking if they have opened, I had to raise the fire a bit to get the liquid steaming. Once the mussels start opening stir them with a wooden spoon, cover the pan. Repeat this 2 or three times. As soon as the mussels start opening they should be done in 5 to 8 minutes.

Serve them in deep bowls with the liquid pored over over them, serve with bread or french fries.

The new plates

While in the city shopping for last things needed for dinner I noticed that iittala has a 50% off sale. I already own four pieces of their turquoise Teema dinner plates and I’ve been wanting their deep bowl for a while but they are not exactly cheap. So when I saw that they are currently 50% off I could not pass it up.

I bought 4 pieces of the deep bowl in turquoise and 4 pieces of a small sized deep bowl in olive green. The deep bowl was perfect for serving the mussels. Unfortunately I completely forgot to take a photo of the mussels served(above photo is one I got online) in my new bowls.

I’m now pretty happy with the selection of dinnerware I have. I have the complete IKEA 365+ dinnerware in white which combines nicely with the iittala dinnerware

Regarded as “the” summer read and highly anticipated, The Passage by Justin Cronin is yet another vampire story. But don’t confuse it with our hero vampire Edward Cullen.

Set in the not so distance future of 2014 we follow an U.S. Army secret test with a virus, death row inmates and a six year old girl. Soon we are taken 93 years later in a post apocalyptic world where the remaining humans live day by day while fighting of the ‘virals’.

The Passage is the first of what will be a trilogy, 700 something pages long I have to say this book felt like my personal Mount Everest.

When a book is much hyped like this one I expect it to read fast, taking me at least a week at most. A good example is the Millennium Trilogy which I read in a week and a half. Justin Cronin really takes his time to develop characters, detailing environments, relationships and so on. It’s not just a thriller and horror story, but a it has a palpable emotional storyline embedded between all of it. If you like authors like Stephen King and can handle a trilogy the size of Lord of the Rings you might like this book.

I struggled with the first 300 to 400 pages which where mostly settings of plot-lines and characters. After The Road and The Book of Eli the whole deserted towns and cities, everyone long dead gets kinda routine. It’s only after I finally got in the mind set of the characters who know almost nothing about the beginning of it all that I got pulled in the story, rooting for them trying to save humanity.

The book gets a 3 out of 5 stars from me. I admit this is not really my kind of fare but I managed to read it till the end and I would like to read the next book. But I don’t feel like the book lived up to all the hype it got.

If you read the book there will be a part about The Gulf of Mexico which will be so ironic you won’t even laugh.