Chez Panisse by Alice Waters is one of the very first cookbooks I got. My father gave me a copy for Christmas when I was 18, and it’s been with me ever since; it’s a beautiful book. In it, there is a dish of mussels, fennel, saffron and creme fraiche – it is simple and delicious, and relies on really good ingredients, which sums up what has made Alice such an influence in my life. It was probably the first recipe I cooked from the book and I still have it on the menu at my restaurant Spring today, as an homage of sorts.
Mussels are really beautiful in the autumn. When you cook seasonally, as we do, you use whatever you have to hand, and each time an ingredient comes back in season, you are so happy to see it. So each autumn, we will often want to push ourselves and do something new – a mussel escabeche, say – but there’s also something nice about cooking a dish you’ve always cooked. It’s like going back to old friends, like going home. Because I do feel that is what this kind of recipe is. Even if your mother wasn’t the greatest cook in the world, there will always be something she made that still tastes of comfort. For me, it’s my mum’s crumbed chicken with mashed potato; and cherries. When I was a child, mangoes and cherries would mark the end of the school year. We’d always get a box of each when school was out for the summer. I remember sitting in the garden dangling cherries in pairs from my ears like earrings and spitting out the pips, hoping a tree would grow.
Food should take you somewhere special like that – not in a razzle-dazzle kind of way, but in a nurturing way, for both your body and your soul. It should take you to a happy place, which in great part is linked to memory. Someone I work with says all my recipes are memory-bound.
No cook has influenced me more than Alice: her whole approach to food, valuing farmers, prioritising produce, pushing for organics, for good, clean soil. She has made me think about food waste and sustainability, and about how food can contribute to a solution to wider issues. And Chez Panisse takes me back to that moment in my life when it all started, when I fell in love with cooking. Thirty-five years on, I still feel the same.
Mussels with fennel, creme fraiche and saffron
Prep 5 min
Cook 45 min
Serves 4
1 glass dry white wine
2 banana shallots, peeled and finely chopped
4 bay leaves
A few thyme sprigs
10 black peppercorns
1kg live mussels, thoroughly cleaned
1tbsp unsalted butter
1 medium fennel bulb, base and outer layer removed, and finely sliced
2 tsp saffron threads
Salt and black pepper
250ml water
250ml creme fraiche
150g young leaf spinach, well washed
To serve
Crusty white bread
Unsalted butter
Pour the wine into a large, heavy-based saucepan, add the shallots, bay leaves, thyme and peppercorns, and bring to a simmer. Add the mussels, increase the heat slightly and cover with a tight-fitting lid. Cook for four to five minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.
Drain the mussels in a sieve set over a bowl, to catch the cooking liquor. Wipe the pan clean, then return it to a low heat. Melt the butter, add the fennel, season with the saffron, salt and pepper and sweat for 10 minutes, until soft.
Meanwhile, discard any unopened mussels. Strain the mussel cooking liquor and add it to the fennel with the water and creme fraiche. Stir well and bring to a boil, simmer for one to two minutes, then add the spinach and mussels. Cook for a further minute, to wilt the spinach and warm the mussels through. Check and adjust the seasoning.
Serve with crusty, open-textured white bread and unsalted butter.
- From A Year In My Kitchen, by Skye Gyngell (Quadrille)
