Father’s Day: Mussels with Hot Tomato Sauce
Father’s Day is June 15. You know me. Holidays bring back food memories. Here’s one from my Dad Gennaro (aka Jerry).
My Mom was always at the stove so my Dad didn’t cook often. But when he did Dad made some really good dishes. This one is one of my favorites.
This is an unusual sauce. It’s not made with whole San Marzano tomatoes that I use in most of my sauces.
I make this one with tomato paste so it’s a really thick and dense sauce that you spoon on top of the mussels laid atop friselle, or hard twice-baked bread slices.
Heat up olive oil in a pot with the hot pepper. I use whole peperoncini, dried chili peppers. When the oil is hot add the tomato paste and the water you used to rinse out the cans and stir well. As it cooks the paste will darken to a red brick color and be really thick. Stir in some oregano.
While the tomato paste is cooking steam the mussels. Watch me steam mussels and clams. This is the technique that you’ll use for this dish.
Make sure you add enough wine and water to the steaming pot. You need a fair amount of the mussel broth to put this dish together.
If you’re lucky to live in an Italian neighborhood you will be able to buy friselle, twice baked bread rounds or rusks at a local bakery. I can’t get them anymore in North Beach so I baked slices of a sourdough loaf from Italian-French Bakery on Grant until they were hard and golden.
This dish may remind you of the sauce at Vincent’s Clam Bar or Umberto’s Clam House in lower Manhattan’s Little Italy. But my guess is that my Dad got this recipe from his mother and the food she cooked at her Quisisana restaurant in Newark’s Italian immigrant First Ward and later in Brooklyn through the 1950s.
The sweet thick tomato sauce surrounds the tender briny mussels just out of the sea. I hate to say it but my favorite bite is the twice-baked bread soaked with mussel broth and topped with the sauce. But I try to slurp in a mussel too. I love the kick from the peperoncini as it all goes down.
Happy Father’s Day. Wanna share your memories of food your Dad made for you?
Buon appetito!
- 24 mussels well-scrubbed, steamed
- Strained mussel broth from the steaming pot, about 2 cups.
- 4 friselle or baked bread slices
- 2 12-ounce cans tomato paste
- water to slosh-out the paste cans
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
- 2 peperoncini (dried chili) or 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1/4 onion, minced
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 2 tablespoons chopped Italian flat parsley
- Heat the oven to 375 degrees and place 4 pieces of sliced rustic bread on a baking sheet and bake until slightly golden and completely dry, about 15 minutes. Set aside the twice-cooked bread. (Or use friselle, Italian rusks from your bakery.)
- Put the olive oil, garlic, onion and peperoncini in a sauce pot over medium-high heat.
- When the oil sizzles add the tomato paste and the water used to rinse the cans.
- Stir well and when the paste starts to turn to a darker brick red color lower the heat to medium-low and cook for 10 minutes more.
- In the meantime steam the mussels using this recipe. https://www.gianni.tv/10-minute-mussels-clams/ or the link above in the post.
- Remove the steamed mussels from the pot and strain out the broth. (You should have about 2 cups of mussel broth.)
- Add half of the mussel broth to the sauce and mix well.
- Remove the top shell from the mussels.
- Rub the twice-baked bread with a garlic clove and drizzle each piece with extra virgin olive oil
- Put a piece of the twice-baked bread on the bottom of a dish or bowl.
- Drizzle some broth over the bread to soften it. (If more liquid is needed use water.)
- Spread some sauce over the bread.
- Arrange 6 mussels around the bread and top each with sauce.
- Sprinkle with each mussel and the bread with extra virgin olive oil and the parsley. Serve immediately.