Seafood
Early researchMussels
100 g of raw mussel meat holds 12 µg of vitamin B12 — 500% of the requirement. The arthritis evidence belongs to New Zealand green-lipped mussel extract, not to mussels, and it held only at medium term.
Mussels in tomato
Lift them out as they open. Waiting for the last one toughens the first. Salt goes in at the very end.
2 servings25 min
Ingredients
Method
Debeard the mussels just before cooking and scrub the shells against each other.
Discard any that gape and will not close when tapped. They are dead already.
Heat the olive oil in a pot and cook the chopped onion over medium-low for 5 minutes.
Add the sliced garlic and cook 30 seconds only. As soon as it takes colour, move on.
Halve the cherry tomatoes, add them and cook 5 minutes to draw out the juice, pressing with a spatula to speed it up.
Pour in the wine and boil hard for a minute to drive off the alcohol.
Add the mussels, cover, and cook 5–7 minutes over high heat, shaking the pot once partway.
Lift each one out with tongs as it opens. Discard any that stay shut.
Reduce the liquid 2 minutes more, and taste before you add any salt. The mussels have already salted it.
Return the mussels, finish with parsley and pepper, and serve.
Cooking note
Taking them out as they open is the whole dish. A mussel is done one to two minutes after it opens. Wait for the last one and the first has had three or four minutes too many and turns to rubber. It is fiddly, but use tongs and lift them one by one.
Salt goes last because of the sodium. Raw mussel meat holds 286 mg per 100 g, and boiling moves it into the broth. A kilo in the shell yields 200–300 g of meat, so 600–850 mg is dissolved in that liquid. Salt before tasting and it will almost certainly be too salty.
Sand settles at the bottom. When you ladle the broth out, leave the last spoonful in the pot.
The garlic gets 30 seconds because of allicin — heat-sensitive, and bitter once it scorches.
Cooking the tomatoes down first is about acid. Acid cuts the mussels' fishiness and cleans up the broth.
Check shellfish toxin advisories in spring. Levels exceed the limit along the south coast from March to June, and cooking does not destroy it. Do not use mussels you gathered yourself.
Ingredients used here
Vegetables
Early researchTomato
Cooked beats raw here. Heat multiplies how much lycopene your body can actually absorb.
Vegetables
Moderate evidenceGarlic
The evidence for garlic points to a modest drop in blood pressure and cholesterol. The trick is to crush it and wait ten minutes before it hits the heat.
Oils & fats
Strong evidenceOlive oil
Cardiovascular events were 31 % lower in a randomised trial of 7,447 people. Against other vegetable oils, though, there was no difference.