Pasta With Beans and Mussels

By LaLaCooks

Mark Bittman, NY Times:

I HAVE cooked pasta with mussels and I have cooked pasta with beans, but I had never cooked pasta with mussels and beans — or even thought of the combination — until I had dinner earlier this year with my friend Luciano Castiello, who is a native of the Liguria region of northwest Italy. Perhaps more important, he’s had jobs — currently as a marketer for Banfi, the wine producer and importer — that require him to travel the world, to better understand the relationship between food and wine.

Related
Recipe: Pasta with Beans and Mussels (September 9, 2009)


Luciano asked me if I’d ever eaten pasta e fagioli con le cozze. The name of the dish was enough for my mouth to begin to water. It is, he said, typical of the villages of the Sorrento peninsula, south of Naples.

The idea is to have 50 percent mussels, 25 percent pasta and 25 percent cannellini, borlotti or cranberry beans. The remaining ingredients are garlic, oil, white wine, chili flakes and occasionally tomato.

I had to make it. I steamed mussels in a pot with no water: it’s unnecessary, and anyway you want the most intense mussel liquid you can get. I let them cool a bit and removed them from their shells, reserving the cooking liquid.

All mussels — even well-scrubbed ones — contain some sand, so you could strain the liquid through a fine towel or layers of cheesecloth. But I find it easier to just pour it out slowly, leaving the sand on the bottom of the pot, where it belongs.

The rest is straightforward, and yes, you can use canned beans.

But please remember these mussel basics: Wild taste better than farm-raised, but are harder to clean; when you’re cleaning, discard any whose shells are easy to pry apart (they’re dead), or relatively heavy (they’re probably dead, and filled with mud), or have cracked shells (they’re not worth the risk). If you follow these instructions, all the mussels you cook will be good. And in this dish, terrific.

Ingredients

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 pound rigatoni or other cut pasta
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more for drizzling
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
• 1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes, or to taste
• 1 cup cooked cannellini or borlotti beans, drained
• 2 tablespoons dry white wine
• 1 cup chopped fresh parsley.

Preparation

Step 1

1. Put mussels in a large pot with a lid. Cover, turn heat to medium-high and when you hear the mussel liquid boiling, reduce heat to maintain a steady bubble; you will hear it and see steam escaping. Shake pot now and then; when mussels open, remove them. Let cool slightly and shuck, reserving cooking liquid. When liquid has cooled, strain it.

2. Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil, cook pasta until not quite done (figure about 2 minutes short of where you would usually cook it), drain and set aside.

3. Put oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat; add garlic and chili flakes and cook for about 1 minute. Add beans, wine, pasta and mussels; reduce heat to medium-low and stir to combine. Add as much reserved mussel liquid as mixture can accommodate without becoming too soupy. Cook, stirring gently, until pasta is fully cooked and everything is warmed through; add more liquid if you like. Adjust seasoning as needed, drizzle with a bit more olive oil if you like, sprinkle with parsley and serve.