Supermarket Bounty Hunters

I think we are so lucky to be able to easily buy lots of interesting ingredients at the supermarket and whip up really good meals at home. Last night, we came across New Zealand green mussels (at a really cheap price of 80 cents for half a kilo) and Kyoho grapes (at a less cheap price of $10 for 300g).

Steamed Mussels in Spicy Broth (from Neil Perry's Good Food)

- 1.5 kg mussels, cleaned and debearded

- 1 red onion, sliced. 4 cloves garlic, sliced.

- 1 teaspoon chilli flakes (pepperoncino)

- 2 tablespoon salted baby capers

- 75 g Italian parsley, roughly chopped

- 150 ml dry white wine

- 3 tablespoon unsalted butter (optional)

- juice of 1 lemon

- freshly ground pepper

Heat a little extra virgin olive oil and saute the onion, garlic and chilli flakes for abt 5 min. Add the mussels, capers, parsely and wine, cover and cook till mussels open. Add the butter, lemon juice and combine. Grind some pepper over. Serve over spaghetti or with warm crusty bread.

Kyoho Grapes are extremely large and sweet, with a rich winey syrupy taste. Eat them quickly for they tend to ferment very fast due to the high sugar content. A simple recipe for making jam with them from the Internet, although that seems rather extravagant to me, given the price at which they are sold.