Let's Go Find Us Some Supper, eh?

After a morning full of weeding kikuia—essentially grass on steroids—and planting seedlings in the garden, we ventured down the road to forage for our supper. Turns out that here in Te Mata on the Coromandel Peninsula, if you time your trip to the beach with low tide, you’ll find oodles of mussels.

Find mussels we did! At first all I saw was a bunch of rocks and sand, but then my eyes adjusted (à la the days of the Magic Eye pictures) and I saw mussel shells nestled in amongst the rocks. Turns out spotting them is the easy part; prying them from the rocks required a bit of mussel!…sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I’ve never eaten a mussel, and I was super excited that the first mussels to touch my palate would be ones I collected myself. It only took about twenty minutes for the four of us to collect 100 mussels (you’re allowed to harvest 25 per person), and then that was it. Easy days.

Bruce cooked them in a tomato and onion sauce and served that over rice. I must say, I don’t think Mussels will ever really be my shellfish of choice, but the dish was delicious nonetheless. And you really couldn’t beat the freshness!

The next day I made us mussel chowder for lunch. I used my Grandma’s clam chowder recipe and simply swapped in the mussels (and added some celery). It was quite the hit! Bruce, Rachel, Ian, Louise, and Chris all devoured the chowder, and I must say, it was rather tasty! I’ve left a copy of the chowder recipe with Bruce and Rachel at their request; how wonderful that my Grandmother’s legacy of extraordinary clam chowder has been passed on to Kiwis in New Zealand!! Ah, I love food, the stories behind the dishes, the way you become the most important ingredient in your dish, and how enjoyable it is to share food with others.