Womanhood + Cooking Mussels on the Beach
Easy, romantic and bloody delicious! The perfect summer recipe.
Cooking mussels on the beach is my favourite way to cook (and eat) them. It’s summery, delicious and romantic!
This was one of my favourite recipes to make when I was living in Tassie (Tasmania), specifically when I would take myself on a solo date day. A time where I romanticised myself and my life, a lot. It was really special. It was a really specific chapter of womanhood for me.
Womanhood looked like:
Solo date days cooking mussels on the beach at sunset.
Teaching myself to solo hike and camp.
Packing up my car and moving to a tiny, beautiful, cold island where I knew no one. Living in an all girls house (THE BEST)
Drinking beer on the beach.
Cold water swimming.
Sailing!
Right now womanhood looks a little different. I love that about being a woman! I don’t think any one chapter ever looks or feels the same. Fucking amazing, isn’t it? (Aren’t we?!)
Womanhood right now looks like living in Italy:
Eating lots of pasta.
Seeing insanely beautiful, old things.
Learning a new language
Playing with my style (70’s!!👢).
Dreaming big (that I feel a little scared of my dreams!)
Wondering how the bloody hell I keep ending up in these places (Italy !!?)
Figuring it all out along the way.
Very different but no less beautiful.
Womanhood 💘
The first thing I do when the air turns hot and the ocean gets warm in Australia is pack my car with a tent and an esky, and roadtrip somewhere. Stopping at local wineries, cheese shops or fishmongers along the way to pick up local produce. Windows down, music blasting. The best feeling! Solo is a personal favourite of mine, but having company is equally delicious.
Cooking mussels on the beach feels like an initiation to summer. Toes dipped in the sand, glass of wine in hand, salty skin, warm feeling.
The best mussels you’ll ever taste!
You need:
Mussels - buy a bag or as much as you can eat.
1/2 a Leek
Butter - roughly 20g
Garlic - 2 cloves
Chilli - make it as spicy as you like!
Lemon - squeeze half - to your taste.
Parsley - to garnish
White wine - a good splash plus save some for drinking
Bread - to serve
Equipment:
If you’re making this camping or on the beach you’ll need something you can easily cook with. This is what I personally like to use:
A pocket cooker or trangia.
Cooking pot
Gas - Make sure you find a screw on camping gas bottle that is the right fit for your trangia / pocket cooker.
You create:
You’ll most likely need to clean and ‘de-beard’ your mussels before you eat them. I really enjoy doing this. Get a pocket knife or butter knife and scrape the barnacles off the outside and pull the little ‘beard’ from the bottom of your mussel to ‘de-beard’ it.
Fry the butter and a little olive oil with leek, garlic and chilli over a medium heat until it looks soft and a little golden. Add the mussels with a good glug of wine. Make sure you’re drinking the wine while you cook. Very important!
Once the mussels start to open and go from a transparent colour to a vibrant orange it means they’re ready. Turn off the heat and finish with lemon and parsley. Viola!
In Italian style do a little ‘scarpetta’ mopping up all those gorgeous juices and mussels with your bread.
Buon appetito!
Please go make mussels on the beach for yourself, a lover, a friend! Take your book, a pet, or pet nat! It’s the best date idea.
Enjoy, you hungry thing x
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