Mussel Power

Here's the story of my Mom and Suze... I am going to mess this story up, because it is not mine, but I like it, so here it is:

Once upon a time in the 70's, two twenty-something women struck up a conversation while heading home from paralegal training on a hot sweltering day in the middle of summer. The two of them like each other right off the bat, and they hit it off so well that eventually one of them says to the other, "You should come upstairs to my place and have a cold glass of iced tea." This sounds like a fine idea to the other, now very thirsty twenty-something paralegal (who may or may not be my mother, I can never remember who invited whom in this story). But only when the two of them get upstairs and the impromptu iced tea host produces a pitcher of real, fresh, sun brewed iced tea, and the invitee (Who again, may or may not be my mother) practically moans, "Ohhh...you have real iced tea. Oh. My. God," do they realize that they are going to become very good friends indeed.

This, on the surface, is a dumb story with no point, about two young women with unusually strict standards in what constitutes real iced tea. (Um, hello, real iced tea never came from a powder. Thanks.) Except it is an awesome story, because it is a story about how my Mom met Suze, and how along with my Mom's clone Pam, the three of them funneled their respective obsessions with good food, good company, and real iced tea, goddammit, into the infamous dinner club of the 1980s, and eventually, into the centerpiece of every family holiday and vacation, the Kitchen Sluts Anonymous.

Suze was always the big star of the dinner club from what I've heard. Her sauces--over the top. Her desserts--legendary. Even before I really cared at all about cooking, I was hearing about Suze's contributions to dinner club, and how she would dare to make complicated, crazy elaborate dishes, for fun. (Something I know nothing about, har har.)And I can testify firsthand that the KSA would not be the KSA without Suze's ridiculously over the top apple pie, and her penchant for any cocktail containing really great bourbon.

Today, Suze is every bit as much my friend as she is my Mother's, and tonight, she came over to my place for our semi-regular dinner and wine date. Suze is one of the rarest types of friends, the ones who pre-date even your own self, making them, in some respects, your oldest friend by default. Like good China, or a well loved cookbook, Suze got handed down to me (although my Mom still has a timeshare on her as well, make no mistake) and just like china or that cookbook, somehow the fact that she was my Mother's before she was mine makes her somehow that much more valuable. There is a part of me that entirely expects that in 30 years I will have an offspring living in a too-small city apartment, and on any given night, I will be able to find Suze shooting the breeze there with a bottle of wine, and a dish she brought from home. I like the idea of it. I really hope I'm right.

Anyway, tonight Suze was mine, and tonight we made mussels. Being a mussel novice I stuck to the recipe from my trusty Best Recipe Cookbook. I also learned that I stress too much about the life and death of the little buggers. For all of you first time mussel cooks--if they pop open on you in the fridge and you're worried they might be dead, run them under cold tap water and give them a little rap with your fingernail or rub them with between your hands. If they're alive they'll get pissed off and close right up. Have no fear. Steam them and eat them. The mussels were great (Although next time I'm going to reverse the proportions of shallots and garlic...more garlic, less shallot.) And I also need to adjust my equipment. The recipe calls that the mussels be removed from the pot, but the broth be left in the bottom to be mixed with butter and turned into a briney, winey, buttery sauce. That's all well and good, but this would have gone a lot quicker if I had a metal colander that fits into my stock pot so that I could remove all the mussels in one quick motion, rather than spooning out handfuls of mussels with a giant serving spoon, thereby losing quite a bit of heat in the process. Anyway, the mussels were fun to make and perfectly cooked, (6 minutes exactly seemed to do the trick) and oh so pretty in the bowl. And if my only reservation was that they were lukewarm rather than piping hot, then I think I did alright. Suze brought salad (with a homemade dressing whipped up from misfit condiments found in my fridge, because Suze is awesome,) plus a couple pints of fancy ice cream from a local place, and of course, wine.

Dinner was great, conversation, funny, free-flowing, and delightful as always, and hey...even cleanup was a relative breeze. No small feat with the two of us maniac cooks in the kitchen.