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Check Out the Mussels When In Brussels
By Mihar Dias
(C)Copyright, December 2021
Check out the mussels when in Brussels may sound like a bit of corny advice, coming from an old college friend, a former resident of the city, but for a novice, like me, first time in EU, it was worth exploring. It turned out to be an eye-opener about mussels, like fine cuisine, in this renowned city.
“Chez Leon”, a famous mussels house in Brussels, gave us a taste of what the city had to offer. My wife and I shared two large servings of mussels in hot cast iron pots.
We were naive then, a young couple visiting Belgium for the first time, soon after our wedding without knowledge about Brussels and less still on the art of eating mussels.
We had never tasted mussels in a sweet white buttery sauce. Or mussels in any sauce ever! Two naive “kampung” folks, exposed to the city lights of Brussels, for the first time in their lives, living it up with mussels, slurping the soup and fries by the baskets.
I caught myself dripping sauce into my mouth from fries dipped into the pot, much to the amazement of a waiter serving our table who kept murmuring “Pardon monsieur!”
I ignored his interjection with every bite of chip dripping with sauce. At last, he moved away out of view, obviously disgusted with my poor table manners. My wife cautioned me against going overboard with the sauce and chips. But it was too good to waste.
At the risk of being corny I must say, It was really “fries licking good!”, a phrase akin to “finger-licking good!” used in a commercial by a fast-food fried chicken chain.
After the first pot of mussels, we decided to have another. It tasted even better the second time around. The mussels were not rubbery. The taste was exquisite.
The subtle blend of butter and celery was a real treat. I wondered if they had used lemongrass in the cooking. But my wife doubted it and was later confirmed by a waiter who shook his head in disagreement when we asked him in our broken French.
We paid the bill and strolled back leisurely to our hotel sidestepping dog poo in our path. Our old friend who lived in Brussels said city residents loved dogs and did not mind the littering.
We were zigzagging trying to avoid little mounds of poo and enjoying ourselves at being able to jump over every little mohehill when out of a sudden, I felt giddy.
I asked my wife, “Do you think I had forgotten to take my high blood pressure tablets?” Or was it the time difference? Or was it because I hardly slept over 12 plus hours from Kuala Lumpur to London and Brussels? I speculated on and on and finally asked, “Why am I feeling giddy?” Are you feeling dizzy, too?”
She shook her head and smiled her cute smile, “I think they had wine in the mussels sauce! You were slurping it like soup. Remember I tried cautioning you to go easy on the sauce and the chips? That’s why!”
She explained that besides the celery and butter, they had added white wine to the sauce.
“No, no, I did not think a little cooking wine in a sauce could affect me that badly!” I told her.
Logically, I was sure, almost all alcohol would certainly dissipate when cooked on high heat. She shook her head.
Apparently, in this case, there was enough alcohol left to make me, a non-drinker, dizzy and sleepy that led us to retire early, missing out, on our tour of Brussels by night.
That was the first lesson I learnt about fine Western cuisine. There was always some wine!
I have tried mussels prepared differently since then. My good friend Chef Jo, Chief Juror of Master Chef Malaysia helped me appreciate mussels even more with his variety of sauces.
He recommended that we would appreciate mussels more by getting those from Chile which are less rubbery.
That was a second lesson; know your mussels.
Chef Jo had localised the dish by replacing wine, celery and butter sauce with creamy coconut milk, mushrooms and yes, lemongrass! But besides choosing the right, mussels the most important ingredient is the mushroom. He told me he added fragrant “cendawan sisir” found on decaying rubber tress, after heavy rain. He had fond memories of picking them when growing up in his village.
The villagers told him besides being aromatic these “comb mushrooms” had medicinal value. But it was the aromatic taste that persuaded Chef Jo to add them to his heavy coconut sauce. The sauce itself was thick, aromatic, full of flavour reminding me of a creamy sauce of Minang cuisine common in Negeri Sembilan.
He served the dish with a hot baguette which I fully welcome since I could dip it into the yellow coconut milk sauce and savour the taste to my heart’s content without fear that I would end up dizzy with a hangover the following morning.
Another recipe of Chef Jo’s is mussels in “asam pedas” sauce. But you might want to enjoy this with a plate of hot steamed rice instead of fries or baguette.
That brings me to another lesson on mussels appreciation. They are best enjoyed with a piece of hot bread or steaming rice.
However, the best of all mussels ever concocted by Chef Jo is to serve them in his homemade chocolate sauce.
He did not say what went into the sauce besides chocolate but it was better than what we had at Chez Leon, minus the headache the morning after from the white wine in a first-ever, Mussels in Brussels.
Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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