Impepata di Cozze (mussels…don’t quite know how to translate ‘impepata’ :)

Impepata di cozze is a classic Baresi dish. This is how you make it:

• 1kg mussels
• 50ml extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 cherry tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic
• freshly ground black pepper

Put the oil into a saucepan with the halved tomatoes and garlic. Allow to cook for about 1 minute and then add in the mussels and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Cover with a tightly fitting lid and cook on a medium/high flame for about 10 minutes or until all the shells have opened. Serve immediately. You can serve them either as a type of soup with crusty bread to mop up the juices, or, as I did, you can lift some of them out of the juice with a slotted spoon, trickle some olive oil over them and a sprinkling of parsley and serve them as an ‘antipasto’. Then remove the remaining mussels from their shells strain the juice and save it along with the mussels to use in the next recipe Coquille San Nicola 🙂