Mussels two ways with Asparagus

A frozen package of mussels found its way into my shopping basket at the supermarket. I was looking for some scallops, but they were out. A while ago I found a recipe from 3 Michelin star Chef Witzigmann. He took the mussels to an other level. Hid some in pasta and the other open in the sauce. But since it was a high end recipe, the mussels were still in their shells.

I did the recipe my way, but two ways too. The idea of the recipe stuck to me. But I had to work with the ingredients I had in stock. Since we still are in the first part of asparagus season, some of them went into this dish. And asparagus goes very well with mussels.

The preptime depends on your ability to make a pasta dough and have it rolled out very thin. You will need some eggwash as glue to close the pasta later.

My sauce base was a quick one. I had a little container of seafood base or lobster base at home. Just the right amount of water and some double cream and the sauce was ready for the other ingredients. That took only 5 minutes.

Ingredients for 2:

225 g defrosted mussels, 1 shallot, 1 clove of garlic, 1 tbsp olive oil, 50 ml white wine

salt and pepper, 4 stalks white asparagus, 1 stalk tarragon, 3 stalks thyme, 1 egg

1 pot of seafood or lobster stock, 100 ml double cream, 3 stalks green asparagus and the 4 tips of the white ones.

Chop shallot and garlic, peel the white asparagus, set the tips aside for the sauce and chop it very fine. Take halves of the mussels and cut them up in small chunks. 

Put that all in a pan with some oil and cook for 3 min, add the wine and salt and pepper and some herbs and cook the wine down completely. Add the mussels to warm through. Get it out of the pan onto a cold plate to cool down.

Cut the pasta sheets into 12 cm rectangles and fill with cold mussel mix. Brush egg wash around and make the pasta packages. Try not to leave too much air in, otherwise the pasta will open up in the water. Cook for 4 min in heavy salted water.

Make the sauce and add the green and white asparagus, the tarragon and the thyme and season with salt and pepper. Bring everything together.