Mussels in Cider Broth with Crusty Bread and Homemade Marmite Butter
Hearty warming fragrant cider broth with hot steamed mussels served with warm crusty bread and a quick and easy homemade Marmite butter – inspired by the mind blowing East London restaurant, Typing Room. Making your own butter is a pretty impressive skill to know. Its super easy, and ridiculously speedy – simply whip cream until the curds and whey separate, and add your flavourings.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2kg of mussels from a sustainable source – ask your fishmonger (debearded and scrubbed clean – chuck any with their shells broken)
1 litre of dry craft cider
3 banana shallots, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 red chillis, finely chopped
Bunch of fresh herbs roughly chopped (parsley, dill, chives)
2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Cracked black pepper
Maldon sea salt
Seedy, crusty loaf of bread (in Hackney, we like E5 or Pavilion bakery)
Juice of a lemon
For the homemade butter:
250ml whipping cream or extra thick double cream – room temperature
1 tsp Maldon Salt
1 tbsp Marmite
Special Equipment:
Magimix / blender with paddles
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C.
You want to start off by making your homemade marmite butter. You can do this a couple of days in advance if you like. Pour your cream into the magimix and using your paddle attachment instead of the blade, whip on full speed until the liquid and solids completely separate (about 8 minutes). You basically want to over whip it as much as possible, and scrape down the sides every couple of minutes. You know it’s done when the solid part forms a lump and starts making a smacking sound against the side of the blender.
Pour the liquid out, and discard. Pat the butter dry on some kitchen towel and pop into a bowl with 1 tbsp of Marmite and 1 tsp of Maldon salt. Stir with a wooden spoon until completely combined. Add more salt if necessary to taste. You can then pop into a ramekin to serve. Refrigerate but make sure you take the butter out of the fridge 15-20 minutes before serving to soften.
Pop the whole loaf of grainy bread in the oven to get warm for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a large pot over a medium heat, fry off your shallots, garlic and chilli in your olive oil until shallots are translucent. Crank up the heat and add the mussels, pop the lid on and give it a good shake to mix the onion, garlic and chilli through the mussels, take the lid off, pour in the cider and pop the lid back on again, give it another shake and steam the mussels until they just open – about 6-8 minutes depending on their size. Add your fresh herbs and a crack of black pepper and salt at the very last minute and give it another shake to encorporate. Remove any mussels that haven’t opened.
Pour into your desired serving bowl and serve with the hot crusty bread lathered in your homemade Marmite butter.
DELISH.
