Making moules farcies

The first stage of preparation for one of the dishes I've often enjoyed in restaurants and in friends' houses but never before made at home - les moules farcies à la Sètoise, although our friends here would say they are just moules farcies and not confined to Sète. We had a lot of advice from friends in the village shop and the man who sells shell fish on Saturday mornings. We bought a kilo of large mussels from Bouzigues and Lo Jardinièr bravely opened them all while I made the stuffing from sausage meat, chopped cured ham, onion, garlic, breadcrumbs, herbs and beaten egg. Then I stuffed them, closed them and packed them into a large pan, covered them with a mixture of white wine, tomato purée and some of the (very salty) liquid that came out of the mussels, simmered them for 35 minutes, mixed a little aïoli into the sauce and served the mussels and sauce with Camargue rice.

It wasn't as daunting as I'd expected, especially with LoJ to do the hard work, and they were so good we'll definitely make them again. We cooked them just for the two of us, as it was an experiment, and we couldn't eat them all, but the other half will be good tomorrow with the rest of the aïoli.