Spicy Tinned Mussels and Dry Riesling | Wine & Food Pairing | Chef Hannah Cunningham

Hey everyone, I'm Hannah Cunningham, mother sauce, from Le Bontemps. I'm a micro baker and I'm opening up a restaurant wine bar, but today we are going to zhuzh up some tinned mussels. It's really simple. We're just gonna add a few ingredients, some gochujang, some lemon zest, some shallot and garlic. We're gonna pop that into a toaster oven for 10 minutes and you have the perfect girl or boy dinner with a side of toasted baguette. This specific tin came with some chili and garlic and oil and so we drain that out into the bowl so we can make room for all the yummy stuff that we wanna add. Part of that yummy stuff that we wanna add is some gochujang. So gochujang is a fermented chili paste. It has some decent spice to it, but not like unbearable, so don't be too scared. I'm just gonna use the oil that the mussels came in to kind of loosen this gochujang up and add a few more things while we're at it. Finely diced shallot and garlic. I'm gonna toss some of that in as well. We're really just trying to beef these mussels up and it makes for pretty cheap, fast, easy, but totally delicious and elevated meal. I have some lemon zest here, so this will brighten it up a little bit. We made some room in here for the sauce to kind of creep down between the mussels, which is the goal. And I'm simply just gonna cover the mussels with this little concoction that we made. And I mean, you can do this with any set of flavors. So we're kind of going a little bit Korean here. I mean, you could do tomato sauce and basil, whatever sort of combination of flavors that you want. The world is your muscle. I'm gonna tap it down a little bit. You know, everyone asks, well, how do you know when it's done or how long? How long do you cook it for till it's bubbly and delicious and it looks like the sugars in the gochujang have caramelized a little bit? I'm just gonna toss this in my toaster oven, 400-ish. I'd say 10, 15 minutes is a good start. When it comes to food and wine, one plus one equals four. We're looking for like a pairing that's going to make something greater than either of its parts. And you probably know this, but Riesling and spicy food are like a match made in heaven. Even a dry Riesling often has some residual sugar. And so it sort of lends a balance to the spiciness of whatever food you're eating. I am a total nerd about this wine right now. This is a dry Riesling out of Rheingau, Germany by the wine producer Eva Frick. So in 2017, a hailstorm threatened to take out all of the vineyards in Rheingau. And Eva decided to harvest the grapes early. When you harvest grapes early, there tends to be more acidity and the fruitiness hasn't fully developed yet because they're not fully ripe. Now, the Riesling varietal is like the perfect varietal to pick early because it's so aromatic and so floral that even if it's harvested early, we still get those floral notes and the aromatics. And it could use a little bit of acidity. And so Eva made wine out of necessity in 2017, but when she made the wine out of those grapes, the wine really reminded her of her time on the Portuguese coast, drinking the Portuguese table wine called Vino Verde. And so she said, this is kind of the best of both worlds. It's like a Riesling out of Rheingau. It has those aromatics, but it has this sort of zippy acidity that I love about Vino Verde. And I'm like totally obsessed with this wine right now. So on the nose, maybe some lemon curd, some lime, some grapefruit, kind of those Vino Verde classic characteristics, but you're also getting the petrol of Riesling that we know and love. Petrol, should I go into that? Yeah, okay. Petrol is a good thing in wine, especially if we're talking about Riesling. It's the predominant characteristic that we know and associate with Riesling. It literally smells like plastic pool toys out of the box, or I mean, gasoline. It's one of those identifiable characteristics of Riesling and you get it here, but it's balanced with that high acid and notes of grapefruit. This wine will be a perfect pair for the umami, rich, spicy, tinned muscles. It's not quite bubbly, but I can tell it's sort of seeping through. Do you wanna try some wine? So in wine, there are three types of notes. One is the first primary, are notes that come directly from the grape. Secondary are notes that come from a winemaking practice. Tertiary are notes that come from aging the time, either in oak or the bottle. Petrol is a primary note. It is literally, the grape just has this chemical that, or chemical thingy that's happening. And it's like, it's opinionated. Like, this is why people think they don't like Rieslings because of this specific thing. Along with, there was a lot of bad Riesling made like in the 80s. So I'm gonna garnish with some fresh parsley because that's what I have. You garnish with cilantro, chive, all of the above, but it just brings a little bit of freshness. Let's try it. Hot. I love this dish because we took something like so humble, just a tin of mussels, and we use all the parts of it and just added a few ingredients and like, this is the perfect dinner. The crusty baguette adds some great texture to it because we don't have a lot of texture going on in the mussels themselves. It adds a little bit of body. It's nice and spicy and I'm craving something and it's a dry Riesling, obviously. The perfect pair and I'm a happy girl. It's honestly so tasty, you should eat some.