Moules à la bretonne: Breton mussles with oven-baked potato chips

first tried mussels when I was 6. On my last pre-school vacation in the Crimea, my Mom made friends with a Muscovite couple who spent their whole summer living in a tent on top of a seaside cliff. The husband had an aqualung that he used to swim to an underwater rock far in the open sea and pick wild mussels. Then they would cook them on a bonfire and wash it down with beer. I wasn't really impressed with this Robinson Crusoe culinary. The mussels on their own are too bland and the Muscovites tended to overcook them for food safety reasons.

It was much later in my life that I discovered how to cook mussels. It's a breeze. First make the taste base.Then steam well-washed mussels in it. As soon as the shells open, they are ready to serve!

More often than not I fix them à la marinière but this time I used a different recipe I picked up on my trip to Brittany: à la bretonne, the Breton way. There is a disagreement as per what constitutes Breton style. In St. Malô I had a bit of an argument with the proprietress of a brasserie we had lunch at. I wanted my Breton mussels aux lardons (with fried bacon specks) but she insisted aux oignons. We concurred however that there will be crème in it.

When back home, I dug myself into cookbooks and culinary encyclopaedia and discovered that there is a great variety of opinions on the subject. Some even claim that the recipe requires an andouille (chitterling suasage). Oh, c'mon! Why not stuff then a whole chicken in the pot and douse it with a gallon of cider, really, why not?

At any rate, I used my own impression of everything I saw of Breton cuisine in Brittany and created this wonderful recipe. It seems long but, in fact, is very simple and quick:

1. Before you even get down to the mussels, pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees. If you use a gas oven, cover the vents with aluminium foil to prevent burning.
   
2. Wash and cut 6-8 unpeeled potatoes into thick pieces (see the picture above).
3. Mix a glug of olive oil, a smidgen of honey, a dash of aceto balsamico bianco, some freshly ground pepper and some sea salt.
4. Drizzle the potatoes with the mix. Line on the oven grid making sure there is some enough space between them for the hot air.
   
5. Wash well 2 kg mussels. De-beard, if necessary. Discard open ones.
6. Peel and chop one onion.
7. Melt a blob of butter in a big pot (I have a special one for mussels only, very handy and highly recommended!). Give it a nice grind of black pepper.
   
8. Fry about 125 g smoked bacon and half the medium-sized onion until fragrant.
9. Reduce the heat and add the rest of the onion. Sweat for a few minutes.
10. Turn up the heat and add the mussels. Keep stirring to make sure all shells get exposed to the heat equally.
    
11. Add a cup of single cream and a cup of white wine or cider. Wait until it boils, reduce the heat to minimum and allow to simmer for the alcohol to slowly evaporate. Stir the mussels to let them get drenched with the mix.
12. Serve hot with the oven-baked potatoes.

At the bottom of the pot you have a most delicious seafood broth, unctuous, luscious and slightly smoky with a heady flavour of white wine or cider, whichever you choose to use. The potato chips come out lean and deliciously brown from the honey. You shall never want to go back to the deep-fried monstrosity any more.