Mussels on fire

Some of my colleagues are involved in a research project involves improving sustainable use of shellfish. The idea is that cultivating shellfish is a really efficient way of generating proteins while barely damaging the environment. And if you want to get people to eat more mussels, you need to do some serious outreach! So there was a sort of mini food festival organised in the old slate harbour. The usual crew (Sue, Dean, Martin and me) would go.

Sue would drive; we would park in the nearby industrial estate, in then walk down the old railway, which is now one of my bicycle commuter routes, to the actual festival. We were quite early! Then weren’t many people there yet. But there was already quite a good delegation from Ocean Sciences,  in fetching ‘criw’ T-shirts. 

We greeted our acquaintances, and were offered a very innovative piece of mussel sausage roll. This, in fact, was one of the headliners of the day! This was one of the novel mussel products it was all about. Quite a lot of the rest was just for drawing people in, so they could be made familiar with this kind of new delicacy. 

Really early on, when it was very quiet, our colleague Julie took the mic and started promoting the mussel rolls

The other attractions surely worked too. Susan quickly veered to the Pizza van. But I was at a seafood festival so I wanted seafood! That was a bit tedious; the local fisherman was, of course, present, but I think he had forgot to make sure he had hired effective staff. The others were already feeding me on pizza slices. In the end I got me my seafood though! And in the meantime it got busier and busier.

There also was a flamboyant chef who had, with help of several others, carefully placed a lot of mussels on a wooden table. Later it became clear why; he was going to demonstrate an old-fashioned French way of preparing the shellfish. You just heap a lot of hay on top of them, set it on fire, brush the ashes off, chuck some sauce on top that involves butter and vinegar and lots of other things, and le voilà! Cooked mussels. We were sitting downwind from that, so we were covered in hay ash, but what is a bit of ash among friends. Dean and I were the only ones to want to try them. 

The flamboyant chef in action

After a while one of our researchers, who professionally was more into oysters, joined us. That was nice! I mainly know him because he volunteered to have a dissertation student, and he is doing very well in the cake competition.

After a few hours we decided to head home again. I think it was a success! It was really busy during the second half. I hope they have achieved what they want to achieve. And I bike past the harbour, where the fishmonger has a little shop, quite often. I'm sure that sometimes it will be a good moment to pop in for a mussel sausage roll!