Moules de Bouchot

There are mussels and there are moules de bouchot. Bouchot mussels come from France and are cultivated in Normandy, Brittany and Charantais. They are premium pile clams. The peculiarity of the culture is that the mussels are wrapped in strands around piles in the seabed. Due to the tidal range, the mussels are sometimes under and sometimes above the water. This change is attributed as the reason for the delicious iodinated taste of Bouchot mussels. They are smaller than mussels and bright yellow to orange. Rich in calcium, iron, phosphorus, potassium and sodium, they are considered memory aids. They are also low in fat. It is said that an Irishman named Patrick Walton was stranded in the Bay of Aiguillon in 1235 and developed this culture there. In some stories he is Scottish.

The Bouchot mussel has enjoyed the EU food status of the "Spécialités traditionalnelles Garanties "Moules de Bouchot" (STG)" only since 2013. We discovered them in 2014. They appear in July and are available until January. The ones we get are from the Baie du Mont-Saint-Michel between Brittany and Normandy. The Baie du Mont Saint Michel is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Bouchot mussels there even have a protected designation of origin. What kind of person needs to classify their food so meticulously? Ah, almost forgot. There's even a quote from Victor Hugo. "The return of the tide occurs at the pace of a galloping horse." Sometimes we get Moules de Bouchot du Baie de Granville on the English Channel. These are delicious too, a little smaller because they appear earlier in May but really tasty. They may have no origin legend, no UNESCO crown, no dual provenance marks, no fiction verse and certainly no fortified Norman-style abbey on an island in the Wadden Sea, but we have taken them to our hearts. When a bottle of Vin Naturel gets too weird for us, we use it to cook the Bouchot mussels. Sometimes leftover prosciutto flies around and ends up in the pot. Or a bottle of Belgian beer. Caught in the whim of the consumer, we believe that it tastes better because we know where it comes from.

(And they're not expensive at all! €13.00 per kilo, which is enough for two people. Plus the Saint Felix Sauvignon Blanc from Günter Hutter.)