Mighty Mussel Gathering Recipe: Mussel Crudo

As part of our Mighty Mussel Gathering we will be sharing a collection of mussel recipes from within our Eat New Zealand community.

To kick things off, our Eat New Zealand founder and award-winning Chef Giulio Sturla of Mapu in Lyttelton has shared an intricate, beautiful and fascinating recipe for Mussel and Vegetable Crudo.

We will continue to share more of these mussel recipes over the coming weeks with the aim to encourage more New Zealanders to celebrate and cook with mussels as an affordable and nutritious meal idea for their whānau.

If you are a chef, food writer, keen home cook or general mussel enthusiast - get in touch and send your mussel recipes to kate@eatnewzealand.nz

Mussel and Vegetable Crudo

By Chef Giulio Sturla

Ingredients:

Mussels, turnips, yams, tomatoes, sea salt, gelatine, fresh chillies, canola oil, thyme, fresh horseradish

Method:

For the mussels, clean under running water and steam for 3 mins or until open, remove from the shell and reserve any mussel juice in the chiller.

For the vegetables, with 4 turnips slice them thinly with a mandolin, the yams must be ripen on a table under direct sun for at least two weeks, this will ripe them up, slice 4 yams thinly as with the turnips and reserve

For the tomato water jelly, at the end of the summer season blend 2 kilos of ripe tomatoes with 40 grams of sea salt, place this inside a jar, cover with a plastic wrap touching the mixture to avoid oxygen contact and let ferment for 3-5 days. Strain though a cloth, reserve the solids for other preparation and measure 400 ml of the water. Put 2 gelatine sheets to soak in cold water and warm in a small pot 100 ml of tomato water, when the gelatine is ready dissolve in the warm water, mix thoroughly and add the other 300ml of water, let set in a container in the chiller.

For the fermented chilli, use the same process as with the tomato water, blend 1 kg of fresh chillies (stems removed) with 20 grams of sea salt, put inside of a jar and cover with a plastic wrap touching the surface of the mix to avoid oxygen contact, is ready after 3 days or when start bubbles on the side.

For the thyme oil, blanch in boiling water 100 grams of fresh thyme for 8-10 seconds and cool down right away in an ice batch. Arrange over a dry towel and squeeze the water out. Blend 100 grams of thyme with 200 grams of canola oil for 5 min, strain overnight over a fine mesh.

To plate:

Arrange the turnips and yams on a plates as a mosaic, cut 2 mussels in 3 pieces each and arrange over the mosaic. Grate one teaspoon of fresh horseradish on a small bowl and mix in 4 tbsp of thyme oil and 1 tsp of fermented chilies, season with this sauce over the vegetables and mussels. Break the soft jelly with a spoon and spread over the dish.