A big bowl of steaming mussels is my idea of heaven especially when it involves high quality ingredients like Gubeen chorizo and Longueville House Irish cider.
Serves 2 
20 mins 1.5kg mussels, washed and the beards removed
1 tbsp butter
½ tsp chilli flakes
1 large shallot, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
100g Gubbeen (or your favourite) chorizo, roughly chopped
200ml Longueville House Irish (or your favourite) Cider
100ml cream
A good handful of flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sour dough bread slices, to serve
Large pot
Mussels have always been eaten in Ireland, usually by coastal dwellers, but they were also hawked around the streets of Drogheda and of course Dublin, as evidenced in the old song about Molly Malone who ‘wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow’. Today the mussels of Wexford are particularly large and succulent, a commercial mussel farm having been established there, but there are also many fine mussels in other parts of Ireland. This is a modern recipe given to me by the Irish aquaculture association. Recipe from The Pleasures of the Table: Rediscovering Theodora Fitzgibbon.
My home town of Howth is famous throughout Ireland for its fish. Along the west pier there are plenty of fishmongers to choose some of the freshest fish for supper. This wonderfully creamy seafood chowder always reminds me of home and with a few slices of brown bread with Irish salted butter, I’m there in an instant. This recipe is from my cookbook HomeCooked.
