Mike van de Elzen: Hot smoked mussel pate

Hot smoked mussel pate  

Cook time: 10 minutes 

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Serves 6-8

300-400 gm darker fleshed fillets like Kahawai or Trevally 

100 gm seasalt 

2 cups large manuka wood chips

10 green lip mussels  

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

3 tbsp crème fraiche

Juice of one lemon

1 tbsp honey

Pinch of paprika  

Cracked pepper and seasalt

3 tbsp fennel tips & chives, chopped finely  

Toasted sour dough

Start by making up a salt brine by combining 100gm of salt with 1 litre of water. Whisk until dissolved.

Submerge the fish fillets into the water and leave for 30 minutes to firm-up and flavour.  

Place 2 x cast-iron pans onto the heat with the wood chips inside. Onto the wood chips, ball up some tin-foil and then place the fish fillets and mussels on top.  

Keeping them off the wood chips. Place a lid on top of the pan and crank up the heat, causing the wood chips to smoke. Once smoking leave on high for a further minute.

Turn off the heat but leaving the lids on. After 5 minutes, remove the mussel and fillets.

Place half the mussels and fillets into a blender along with the mustard, crème fraiche, lemon juice, farm honey and paprika. Blitz until smooth, taste and season with salt and cracked pepper.  

Chop the remaining mussels and fillets and fold through the pate, along with the fennel tips and chives.

Serve with some toasted sourdough.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks I'd.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Be and our resident chef Mike vand Elsen joins me.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Good morning, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
You are coming to us from the Marlborough Sounds.

Speaker 4 (00:19):
I believe, yes, lovely, beautiful sunshine, no clouds, no wind, gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You are there for they Havelock Havelock Muscle and Seafood Festival.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
Yeah. I was there yesterday on the stage. Hen's the
slight croaky voice. But when they asked it, this is
the third year of being down to the Havelock Festival
and man, if you haven't been there, please go there
next year because it is so well run, it is
so well put together. It's in a tiny little community,
and I think they I think they had just under

(00:54):
five thousand people there yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
And they had Shape Shift to play a love sh awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
They were and they were on point. They were amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
So that was my bonus because I tend not to
go the festivals just because you kind of don't know.
As people get a little bit of alcohol in to them,
they start grabbing. They're like, yeah, let's have a photo
with the food cruck. Guy, and yes, I tend to
avoid them. So when I'm invited to a vestival to work,
it's actually quite special for me because I can be

(01:25):
there and you kind of get shuffled around the place
and here and there, but it was such.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
A good day, So you actually like muscles. I love.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
I used to. I used to. Quick story must have
been about twenty years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
I'd burnt myself really badly in the kitchen and I
was on antibiotics because of it, and so I had
a day off. We were living in gray lind at
the time, and I said to be let's cook. Let's
cook up big pot of muscles for dinner. So yeah,
steam them off, but a white wine, putting some tomatoes,
sat down, had a big bowl of muscles, which I
normally would never worry about anything. Woke up in the

(02:00):
middle of the night and I had these weird welts
all over my body and you would kind of scratch them,
and they were double in size.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
So I woke up b and said drive yourself to
a and E. I was like, okay, darling, don't worry
about me. I'll be fine.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Down the highway towards Green Lane, towards the White cross
the air and I had to scratch my throat and
I just instantly scratched it, and all of a sudden
my throat closed and I'm driving like unable to breathe
at this point, and I'd pull into the white cross,
fall out of the car, and luckily there was there
was actually a nurse there knew what was going on

(02:34):
straight away and had an EpiPen there within ten seconds
and Or was fine again.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
But it was something to do with the antibiotics that
you can eat muscles.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Now, yeah, well I haven't eaten them for twenty years.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
But in preparation for the Muscle Festival, because I had
to judge in between the demo, I had to judge
a recipe and so I was like, I was going
to be eating muscles. And so on Wednesday we sat
down and had some muscles. I actually prepared this dish
just to practice it, and I had my first muscle
in twenty years.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
And I'm still here now.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Here, and you've got a beautiful hot smoked mussel paatea
for us today. Take us through it.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
So we made this yesterday. So what you do is
start you off.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
It's actually got muscles, but it's also got a darker fish,
like a car wire or a tra valley, or it
could be any other fish.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
You know, kingfish doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
So salt about three to four hundred grams that make
a ten percent salt solution. So ten one hundred grams
of salt into a letal water. Whist that drop your
fish in. But this time you only live in there
for thirty minutes. While that's soaking. I take two cars
iron pans. You could take an old roasting tree that
you don't really care about. Sprinkle some large manuca chips
onto the bottom, and then put those onto an open flame.

(03:46):
And then I scramble up like little pieces of tin
foll put them onto the wood chips as it's starting
to heat up. And then onto those pieces of tin
four you put your fish that's been salting for thirty minutes.
And then I've got ten large green lit muscles. So
in one pan I put the fish. In the other pan,
I put the mussels onto the tin four. Once it
starts to smoke, put the.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
On to it. Leave it for about another minute.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
It doesn't need a lot longer, otherwise you potentially oversmoke
and it becomes way too, way too bitter. Crank it.
It does smoke a fair amount. Yesterday I think I
smoked out the Marquee. It does smoke. So if you
can do it outside, all the better. Once it starts
to smoke, leave for a minute, like I said, and
then turn it off and just leave the lids on
them and just let them sit in there for ten
to fifteen minutes. Once it's done, pull them out. Take

(04:31):
your muscles out of the shell, take the bed out
of you, if it's not already taken, and then into
a blended they go along with the fish that's been
freshly smoked. Two tablespoons of dish on mustard, three tablespoons
of cram fresh the juice of a lemon, a tablespoon
of honey, a pinch of paprika. I put in some
chopped up fennel chips yesterday. It could be some chives.

(04:52):
If you want a little bit of salt, crack at pepper.
Blitz that into it basically turns into a nice pace.
You could just roughly blitz it to begin with and
then stop and you've got a chunky, Or you could
blitz into a smooth and then maybe reserve some the
muscles back, chop them up.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
And then fold them through. It doesn't matter really.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
I serve it with some sourdough, some toasted sourdough, and
some fresh lemon. It's to be able to smoke your
muscles and make a patse within a timeframe of about
twenty minutes, not taking in the brine and the fish.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
It's a pretty fast it's a pretty cool recipe to do.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks the b from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.