It turns out that vegetables aren't the only thing you can dry-fry. This recipe for dry-fried (or wok-roasted) mussels comes from the Boston restaurant Myers+Chang, which published a cookbook earlier this year.
In their eponymous book, "Myers+Chang at Home" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $32), you'll find a lemongrass mussel dish that's a little different from mussels you might find elsewhere.
Owner Joanne Chang explains the process of "dry-frying" shellfish: Throwing mussels in a really hot, dry pan allows them to pop open and pick up a smoky, roasted-in-the-fire-at-the-beach kind of flavor. "Cooking mussels this way also means their liquid reduces instantly as soon as they open, which concentrates their flavor," she writes. "Mussel broth is always the best part of mussels, anyway."
Unlike many mussels recipes, which focus on garlic and white wine, this one adds extra layers of flavor with lemongrass, cilantro and fish sauce.
Chang recommends making a meal of these babies by serving them with garlic toast or as an appetizer. Don't forget the trick for cleaning mussels: Cover them in cold water for about 20 minutes or so; they will spit out any sand that might be inside. Scrub the shells and pull the stringy "beard," and you're ready to cook them.
