Hot Mussels in Red Sauce with Ouzo- a Messy, Sumptuous Summer Dinner Party.

Sleepy August is a perfect time for a casual dinner party with your friends who are still in town. Mussels strike the right balance, casual, messy, sumptuous and copious. There's no point inviting fussy people who are afraid of getting dirty- food can be a lusty messy business. This meal certainly is- red broth sloshing around, blue-black mussel shells crashing into bowls. Candlelight would make it all look very bacchanalian/romantic. But we had ours in the light of the afternoon; I love a table strewn with the chaos of a good meal. There's no shame in a dirty tablecloth- it's the bedroom hair of table settings. 

It can be very festive to serve lots and lots of one fabulous thing. Saline, brothy, spicy, tender, and curiously sweet- this is that thing. It is not complicated; it simply needs a big pot and lots of big bowls for serving, and for tossing the pretty blue empty shells into. 

Mussels are the ideal combination of very festive and very inexpensive. I suppose they make for poor leftovers, but I don't know- we've never had any. A kilo for 2 is not really enough. if you are going for the mood of abandon, get a kilo per person. I find slightly less to be fine- 3 kilos for 4 people, 7 kilos for 9, etc. They are a lots of work to scrape clean and de-beard. If you are making them for more than 4, you will find that many hands make for pleasant work. The best dinner parties start in the kitchen. 

With steel wool and a short knife (and perhaps gloves), attack the outsides of the mussels, scraping them clean of barnacles and plant matter. Do not remove the "beard"- this that is attached to the middle of the flat side of the shell. Do that just before cooking. 

For every kilo of mussels, we will need 2 cloves of garlic and 2 fat tomatoes. Slice the garlic and grate the tomatoes. We will also need dried red chilies, to taste- one for every 2 kilos makes a spicy enough dish. You could add more at the table. The mussels provide their own salt. 

For 4, we will need: 

3 kilos of mussels

a half glass of olive oil 

6 large tomatoes

6 cloves of garlic

1 or 2 dried red chilies 

ground black pepper to taste 

a shot of ouzo 

An ouzo tasting at Eva Distillery, Lesvos.
 I loved the Sertiko.

Grate the tomatoes on the large holes of a box grater and set aside. In your largest pan, heat the olive oil and saute the sliced garlic until it begins to turn golden. Add the chilies, then the tomatoes and let them cook down a little, for 10 minutes or so. The mussels make lots of their own broth. 

Any mussels that are not tightly shut at this point should be tossed out. Add the clean and de-bearded mussels to the pot. The mussels in the hot red sauce will open nearly at once. Try to lift them to the top and work the closed mussels to the bottom. They are done when they are open wide, and then they begin to shrink. The goal is to have wide open, fully cooked but still fat mussels. 

Add *ouzo to taste- the sweet anise flavor plays well with the brininess of the mussels and the heat of the chilies. 

Lay the table with soup spoons, forks, bowls for the discarded shells, and lots of napkins. Serve in shallow bowls with lots of broth. You'll want bread, and maybe a little slightly under-cooked pasta to throw into the bowls and soak up the sauce. To drink, these are nice with anything- red sauce/red wine, more of the ouzo with water and ice, or cold beer. 

These will keep everyone at the table for a long time, and there is nothing more festive than that. 

*I had a intimate, vivacious introduction to the complexities and delights of ouzo at the Eva Distillery in Levsos. I will be writing with warmth about the culture of ouzo in itself soon. With anything spicy or anything salty form the sea, it is the most refreshing companion. 

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Rich Zesty Tomato Pie... How Pleasure Works

Verve, juice, crunch, tang- this is a pie humble only in effort and expense. The basil on the veranda is fragrant and thriving, and the tomatoes at the market heavy and firm. Abundance has lowered their price. They have been on all of our summer tables. In this dish, they star.

Greek baking features a dazzling host of grand variations of the pie ("pita"- like in "spanakopita")- sweet and savory, grand and individual- with fillings nearly as diverse as nature itself. This pie we're having today is very Greek in that it celebrates the generosity of the season, but apart from that it is inspired only my love of the zesty satisfaction of hot tomatoes- a love perhaps more 1950's red sauce Italian than Greek, and the profusion of large leafed basil, pointing again to Italy. Far more substantial than a pizza, but not at all heavy, warm, fragrant, crisp-crusted and golden, it makes a rustic and elegant main dish and will not keep you long near the hot oven.

We will need:

Anything you like for crust- by all means your own hand-rolled phyllo if you like, but I used here some "Perek"- these are crackling dried rounds of thin dough that can be moistened to use as layers of rustic phyllo. 6 come in a pack- this is plenty. One could also use lavash- any type of carpet bread. We need just the three layers on top and on the bottom, and so will be using much less butter than traditional crust calls for.

Perek or Lavash

100 g/ 3.5 oz butter

1 k/ 2 generous lb. of tomatoes

a large bunch of fresh basil

250 g/ half a pound feta

an egg

pepper, and some salt to taste

Wash the tomatoes and put them in a pan on the top rack, with the heat on 200 C/ 400 F- this will blacken their skins and concentrate their juices. Check after 15 or 20 minutes (and throw anything else in on another rack that may need some heat- sliced onions to roast for another dish, stale bread for crumbs or croutons, etc.) The charred skins will slip off easily, and the tomatoes will be surrounded by their golden, thickened juices. While the tomatoes are roasting, melt the butter.

Turn the oven down to 180 C/ 375 F. Assembling the pie will take not five minutes: Coarsely crumble the feta into a bowl, tear the basil leaves and add them along to the feta along with the egg to bind it and as many of the skinned tomatoes as you like (but not the liquid they have shed- save that for a sauce or a stock or a gazpacho)- tomatoes make up the bulk of our red and juicy pie. Salt and pepper this to taste (the heat of freshly ground black pepper is most welcome).

Moisten the brittle perek sheets with water if you are using them. Brush a baking sheet with some melted butter and lay on it one sheet of perek or lavash, brush that generously with butter, sprinkle with salt, and repeat this with two more sheets. Spread the filling over it, leaving some room at the edges:

Cover with the remaining 3 sheets, brushing butter on each and salting lightly, saving plenty of butter for the top (melt more if you need to- use as much as you like. I found the 100 g to be enough, and I am lavish with butter). Score the pie and put it into the hot oven. 20 minutes should see it golden and crisp. The phyllo is thin and already baked so one needn't have the oven on as long as for a pie made with an uncooked dough- a very great advantage in the heat of  summer.

The generous proportion of filling and the juicy tomatoes give the pie the feel of a main dish- we had it as such, but it was also excellent as a snack later on at room temperature, listening to D'Angelo and rereading a 'dessert' book- Paul Bloom's delightful How Pleasure Works. Instant gratification linked all these substantial pleasures.

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