The recipe that follows got invented during during weekends spent at an old friends parents holiday home in the Coromandel peninsula, New Zealand. This is pretty much a dish that you can adapt to your own tastes, using the key ingredients of cream and wine as a base. I've done it adding chilli, crushed tomatoes and roughly chopped red and green peppers. We have a luxury of having Green Lipped Mussels, which are endemic to New Zealand and have the added benefit of being very cheap. So cheap infact that we refer to them as the "poor man's oyster"! Green lipped mussels (Perna canaliculus) differ from other mussel species due to its dark brown to green shell, and has a green lip around the edge of its shell. It is one of the largest mussel species and can grow up to 24 centimetres in length.As well as it's obvious culinary charm, over the past 30 years an enzyme has been extracted and has been developed into tablet, powder, capsule and liquid forms to treat arthritis, osteoporosis and other debilitating conditions by acting as an anti-inflammatory and is now taken as a food supplement for these conditions in over 20 countries. It is manufactured into a various hollistic forms for the following conditions:
- Asthma
- Arthritis
- Bowel Disease
- Menstrual Pain
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Reduces Inflammation
- Increase Joint Mobility
- Free Radical Scavenger
- Protects Gastrointestinal System
- Psoriasis
- Dermatitis
- Skin Problems
They are farmed in New Zealand by attaching themselves to a suspended rope, which causes no disturbance to the sea floor and help keep the waters clean as a filter-feeder, feeding on surrounding suspended biological matter. Their flavour is somewhere between a clam and an oyster. Mussels of any sort should be bought with the shell tightly closed and if the shell has not opened after cooking, be discarded.
