Steamed mussels with corn, tomatoes, and bacon...and a confession about envy

I am flawed. Few days pass me by without a struggle to manage anger, fear, anxiety, and, perhaps worst, envy. Oh yeah, envy, that nasty little twit of a demon that sits around highlighting how successful person A is; and how well person B seems to manage a career, a family, and a glamorous life; or how gorgeous person C's food photograph is; or...the list goes on. I know envy is bad for me. I know envy doesn't tell me the real story of another person's life and accomplishments. I know envy doesn't tell me the real story about what and who I am and what I have accomplished. And that's why I fight with it, try to talk it away. It doesn't always work.


These daily struggles is one reason why it's so refreshing to be with a friend or a person whom I admire and feel deeply for without the tiniest scrap of envy or anger or anxiety. I can simply enjoy his or her skill, competence, self-confidence and feel peace. I think I am able to articulate this for the first time because of last Sunday, when we went to dinner at a friend's house, a friend my husband and I haven't seen in a long time. She knows I have been doing the Grand Tour, introducing my son to different countries and their cultures, food, history, art, music, anything that comes up. She's Indian so she suggested we comes over for dosas (she knows I love them) and have India week. So we did. 


And while we were there, I sat back and watched her. I loved the genuine affection she immediately showed my son, whom she's never met before. I enjoyed watching her strong hands as they skillfully spooned idlis out of the steaming trays, or placed them on plates for the children to eat; her hands were fast and steady, but unhurried. Her demeanor was calm, competent, and loving. She's smart, skilled, successful, manages her household well, and yet she induces no envy in me, only peace and a sense of being cared for. It's indescribably wonderful. And such a relief from the evil spirits that seem to infest my mind half the time. (And, no, I don't really think that evil spirits infest my mind. It's just a metaphor, OK?)


Anyway, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the steamed mussels with corn, tomatoes, and bacon I ate a little while ago and now am going to share with you. It's just a thought, an aside, and a tribute to a person who made me feel welcome, full of admiration, but free from quotidian poison. It was truly lovely.

So, let's move on the mussels. I hadn't been to a regular grocery story in a few weeks, but we were almost out of toothpaste, sandwich bags, canola oil, cheese cloth, canning labels--the kind of things that are hard to find at an organic market or a farmer's market, so my son and I went. While we were there, I had the idea that I wanted to make something with mussels for dinner (after all, I recently found out that farmed mussels are OK to eat according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, and I really enjoy mussels). So I got a bag (I also got a couple of gorgeous sockeye salmon fillets, but that's a story for another day). When I got the mussels home, I took them out of the plastic bag they were in and put them in a container full of ice in the refrigerator. As I was putting them away, I got a whiff of them and was immediately entranced: A briny, fresh, salty smell came from them, clean and bracing as the ocean. I was entranced. I don't remember ever smelling mussels like that.

When thinking about how to prepare them, I knew I wanted to use some of the sweet corn and tomatoes I got from the market last Saturday (after a visit to another friend on Saturday, we walked away with more tomatoes, beans, and squash, so we've really got a bit of produce glut). I decided to steam them with the mussels in some wine, with a little bacon, and oh yeah, how about a sprinkling of homegrown parsley to round it out? This was a tasty, fresh summer meal, cooked in a just a few minutes.

A note on cleaning mussels and food safety: Most recipes that include mussels have you "debeard" them with a sharp knife. Truth is, most of farmed mussels you get these days don't have much of a beard, perhaps one in ten will. But the beard is kind of a yucky, stringy business that isn't going to please anyone at the table, so definitely cut them off when you find them. Also make sure that you scrub each mussel thoroughly; that will help eliminate any grit. If any of your mussels are already open before you've cooked them, discard immediately (that means they are dead, and you don't want to cook dead mussels). Also, if any of them don't open after you've steamed them, again, discard.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs (1 bag) farmed mussels, scrubbed, sorted, and debearded
• 4 slices of bacon, sliced thinly
• 1/2 onion, chopped finely
• corn kernels from three ears*
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 cup dry white wine
• salt and pepper to taste
• a handful of chopped, fresh parsley (or any other herb you've got growing in the garden)

Instructions

1. This dish takes very little time to cook, which means that preparing all your ingredients in advance is especially important. So first thing, prepare your ingredients. 
2. In a large, deep pan, cook the bacon over medium heat until it's golden brown and crispy. 
3. Add the onions to the pan, cook them until they are soft.
4. Add the corn, tomatoes, and garlic. Stir until the garlic is fragrant. 
5. Add the mussels to the pan. Stir a couple of times.
6. Add the wine and cover the pan with a well-fitting lid. Let the mussels steam for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. 
7. Just before serving, season with salt, pepper, and parsley. Make sure to give everyone some bread to soak up the broth, which is so delicious, it's ridiculous. Imagine you are by the sea and relax.  

* A few days ago, I tried to describe how to cut the kernels off the corn cob for my corn chowder post, but I am afraid I didn't do a good job of it. Hopefully the following images do a better job of showing how to do it. Stand the cob up on its end (cut off the end if the cob shifts around too much on the cutting board), hold the knife perpendicular to the cob and slice down, cutting off corn kernels in sheets.

Can I eat this fish?

I struggle with seafood. I know it's good for you (lean protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and so forth) IF it's not chock-full of mercury or other heavy metals, in which case don't eat it all if you are pregnant, nursing, or a young child and only moderately if you are anyone else. I also know that current seafood consumption patterns have the potential to wipe out fish and seafood stocks all across the planet. (Here's a graphic from The Washington Post that illustrates some of the overfishing issues that we currently face.) And I know most of the fish I get is flown or shipped in from somewhere halfway around the world--not a great thought when you aim to live in a way that supports local community and reduces fuel consumption. And then there's the question of farmed or wild? What's better? And perhaps by what yardstick? With seafood, you definitely have to weigh a lot of different factors.

Let's consider some of these factors, starting with sustainability. This topic actually makes me want to chew nails. For one thing, the fish species you thought were sustainable last year, last month, or even last week may not be sustainable today. This week you may be committing an atrocity on fishdom if you buy and eat that kind of fish. It can make you crazy. 

But there are resources to help you stay up to date on what's OK to eat now. In "A Consumer's Guide to Buying Sustainable Fish," Denise Santoro Lincoln notes that your best option is to find a good fishmonger who is passionate about selling sustainable fish and works to keep up with continual changes. She also notes that this isn't really practical for most of us and provides a great list of resources, including Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. World Wildlife Fund also has a list of excellent resources, including some country-specific seafood guides. All this information, however, requires that we as consumers put effort into ensuring we are making good choices. And because the state of a fishery can change so drastically from year to year, it's something we have to check into regularly. (Unfortunately, it's not enough to trust that your grocery store is going to do that work for you.) 

Another factor to consider is farmed versus wild. Some of the problems with eating wild-caught fish are of course depletion of wild fish stocks and the problem of bycatch. However, when done poorly, farmed fish can wreak environmental havoc, including habitat damage, pollution and disease, and escapes, possibly of "Frankenfish." So once again, we have to do our research to find out what's a "Best Choice" and what isn't. I have generally avoided all farmed seafood, but it turns out some farmed species are Best Choices after all (oh boy, I can go back to buying and eating mussels; I love mussels).

For some great tips on choosing seafood that's as sustainable and as healthful as possible, check out Lettuce Eat Kale. Just as fruits and vegetables have seasons, so does seafood and it pays to know when those seasons are.

[Update] And it turns out the cod I had for dinner tonight was from a company that sells Certified Sustainable Seafood (thank you, MOM's Organic Market for looking out for me) and pretty tasty as well. If you happen to have a few cod fillets, here's a really simple recipe.

Cornmeal-Crusted Cod Fillets

Ingredients

• 2-3 cod fillets (if frozen, defrosted), rinsed, patted dry
• salt
• ground white pepper
• 1-2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal (more or less)
• lemon wedges

Instructions

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium-high heat. 
2. Salt and pepper the cod fillets.
3. Beat the egg with a fork in a bowl (just enough to incorporate the white and the yolk). Put the cornmeal on a plate.
4. Coat each fillet in egg. Dip the fillets in cornmeal. 
5. When the butter is foaming and slightly brown, add the fish fillets to the pan. Fry on each side for about 2 minutes per side. (The cornmeal should be golden brown. If it isn't, give it another minute in the pan.)
6. Remove the cod fillets to a plate and let them rest about five minutes before devouring. Serve with lemon wedges. Great accompaniments (especially in spring/summer) are boiled new potatoes with butter and a sprinkling of chives and a simple salad of lettuce leaves with some oil and vinegar.