Baked mussels with cheese is a tasty and easy to prepare appetizer that will decorate any table. There are a large number of recipes for this dish in many cuisines of the world, with various sauces and ingredients.
To cook mussels baked with cheese, you need:
- mussels in shells - 10 pieces;
- butter - 30 gr;
- dry white wine;
- cheese (parmesan) - 100 gr;
- garlic;
- tomato - 1 pc;
- lemon - 1 piece;
- salt;
- ground black pepper;
- cream (preferably fatty).
Cooking
First of all, mussels should be marinated for 10 minutes in white wine and lemon juice, adding a little black pepper. Tomatoes and onions are diced and fried with butter over low heat for a couple of minutes. Next, you need to remove the vegetables, and add another piece of butter, a spoonful of cream and squeeze a small clove of garlic into the pan, put the mussels down and simmer in the pan for ten minutes, then turn them over and stew a little more. Parmesan cheese is rubbed on a coarse grater.
A foil spreads on a baking sheet, on which mussels are laid, and previously fried vegetables are laid on top, each mussel is abundantly sprinkled with cheese, and the baking sheet is covered with foil on top.
Next, the mussels are sent to the oven, which should already be warmed up to 180 degrees, or the microwave oven, set to maximum, and baked for five to ten minutes. More precisely, the baking time should be determined based on the characteristics of your oven. On the table, mussels, baked with cheese, served hot, with herbs and white wine.
If you want to decorate and change this recipe a little, to cook something more interesting and refined than just mussels baked with cheese and vegetables, you can change the filling and add new flavors to this recipe thanks to various sauces. For example, cream sauce, for the preparation of which you need:
- 1 onion;
- ground pepper;
- 1 tablespoon flour;
- 300 ml cream with 30% fat content;
- 1 tablespoon of sour cream;
- 30 grams of butter;
- salt.
Onion finely chopped and fried over low heat along with butter. When the onion gets a golden hue, flour is added to the pan and fried for another 1 - 2 minutes. Then add cream, bring to a boil and let fry for another 2 - 3 minutes. Then you need to add sour cream and to taste salt and pepper.
The sauce is poured into pre-cooked mussels, in each sink approximately one tablespoon, the cheese is rubbed on top and everything is baked in the oven. Mussels baked with cheese and cream sauce are decorated with greens and lemon slices before serving. Better serve them hot.
Another interesting way to diversify baked mussels is to add pungency with wasabi sauce. Mussels are cooked and marinated in the same way as in the first recipe, but instead of vegetables, wasabi sauce mixed with mayonnaise and herbs is added as the filling. The amount of ingredients required to make this sauce must be calculated in the amount of one tablespoon for one mussel shell. Further, as in previous versions, everything is sprinkled with cheese and baked.
So easily and simply you can cook a dish that will surprise and delight you, your loved ones and guests.