Chef's Corner: Steamed Mussels with Spicy Truffled Tomato Sauce

One of the easiest meals that you can make in practically no time is mussels. If you haven't tried it, by all means give it a go. You may get as addicted as we are. The cooking time is something like 7 minutes for the mussels (after hardly any preparation) and there are a multitude of variations. The recipe we're showing you here is not classic. We don't even know if anything like it has been tried before. It's great.

Truff Arrabiata Pasta Sauce is a spicy thick red tomato sauce laced with truffles. When we got it, we could have made some pasta and called it a day, but we wanted to do something unique.

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Steamed Mussels with Spicy Truffled Tomato Sauce

Serves 2 hungry people

1 TB olive oil

4 oz. top quality guanciale or pancetta, sliced thin

1 medium onion, diced

1 bottle TRUFF Arrabiata Pasta Sauce

4 lbs mussels

1/2 cup white wine (or water)

Italian parsley, chopped

Chop the guanciale or pancetta.

Heat the olive oil in a small saute pan. Fry the meat until almost browned. You want it crispy but not overcooked. With a slotted spoon remove the meat and drain on paper towels.

Discard all but about 1 TB of the remaining fat. Saute the onion in the fat until it just starts to turn brown. Set aside.

Clean the mussels, removing any external grit and pulling out any beards. Mussels are a live product. Discard any broken mussels or ones that are open (you can tap them or prod them inside with something like a chopstick and if they close they are alive and ok to use, otherwise discard the dead ones).

Mix the TRUFF sauce and onions in a pot and heat (you can also do it in a large glass measuring cup and heat in a microwave).

Heat the wine or water in a large pot (or anything big enough to hold all the mussels). A tall stockpot with cover is fine, the mussels don't have to be spread out).

Add the mussels and cover. Steam them over medium or medium/high (all depends on your stove) heat for 4 minutes, occasionally shaking the pan or pot a bit. Remove from heat and keep covered for another 3 minutes.

Remove the mussels to another large bowl, discarding any that have not opened. TIP: If you use several large bowls it will be easier to sauce the mussels.

Concentrate the juices in the mussel pot by boiling them down until almost all gone, then add to the onion/TRUFF mixture. Heat the mixture again if it isn't hot, stir in the bits of of fried meat, then pour over the mussels and mix so that they are all coated and sauce also gets inside the shells.

Plate the mussels, sprlnkling with the parsley and serve immediately. We like garlic bread on the side.

WINE SUGGESTION: A Barolo/Nebbiolo would be a really good choice.