Mussels

Blue mussels are native to the Pacific Northwest and they may be wild-gathered or farmed. You can tell them apart because wild mussels are rough, while farm raised mussels have a clean, smooth shell. Green mussels from New Zealand are larger. A relative newcomer is a Chilean variety, similar in appearance to eastern blue mussels.

There is only one mussel that’s been awarded the coveted AOC distinction in France. The mussels nurtured in the waters of the Mont St Michel bay are now more prized than ever after becoming the first seafood to be awarded the coveted French food quality ‘appellation’ label. After much lobbying by local producers, the bay’s bouchot mussels, as they are known, have been awarded the Appellation d’origine Controlee (AOC), more usually given to wines and other foods such as cheeses.

And producers are hoping the label will help end the growing, murky world of mussel fraud as from now on it will be an offence to call mussels produced anywhere else “moules de bouchot de la baie de Mont Saint Michel AOC”. Moules de bouchot are generally the most sought after mussels to be found on French market stalls, firstly because the species grown here is a medium sized bivalve with a distinctively firm, orange-yellow flesh.

The mussel season in France runs from July until November. Then there is also the bouchot effect — the tree trunk sized wooden piles driven into the seabed on which the bay’s distinctive bivalves are grown. Growing the mussels on the wooden pillars, or bouchot, means they are underwater at high tide, but exposed to the marine air when the sea recedes, which helps give them their distinctive flavor. New packaging technologies mean the bay’s bivalves are now turning up as far afield as Japan, where consumers are more used to eating wild mussels grown in China.

Mussel gathering is a tough job requiring physical strength and extreme concentration. The gatherers head out to sea to the wooden pillars in distinctive amphibious metal boats, which drive down the bay’s gently sloping seabed on large tractor-style wheels until the water is deep enough to float freely. Each bouchot contains around 80 kilos of cultivated mussels which must be carefully slid off their wooden pillars using a specially adapted mechanical arm attached to the boat. During the season running from July until November the fishermen generally harvest mussels from around 50 bouchots per trip, but at the peak in September, their boats can be weighed down with double that amount.

To clean mussels: Scrub them with a brush under cold water and scrape off any barnacles with a knife. If the byssus, or beard, is still attached (most cultivated mussels have been trimmed mechanically), remove it by pulling it from tip to hinge or pulling and cutting it off with your knife. Do this just before cooking. Discard any with cracked or open shells.