Mussels with wine and cream | Auckland Food | Wineries and Restaurants in Auckland

This week's recipe is a French country classic that makes good use of our remarkably inexpensive farmed mussels.

Serving the mussels in their shells makes eating them a rather messy affair, so be sure to supply plenty of serviettes or paper towels. An empty bowl for the discarded shells will also prove helpful.

I have allowed for seven mussels per person, but you might like to increase that number if the dish is to be served as a stand-alone lunch or supper rather than as an entree.

1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, peeled, snapped, de-stringed, chopped
1 clove garlic, part-crushed, chopped
2-3 sprigs parsley
28 mussels, alive in the shell
1 cup white wine
half cup cream
sea salt and cracked black pepper

Heat the oil in a wide pan, add onion and celery. Cook on low heat until soft but not brown, then add garlic and cook a further minute.

Strip the leaves from the parsley and chop. Put aside, then add the stalks to the pan. Tip in the mussels and wine, cover the pan and boil for 1 or 2 minutes.

Remove each mussel as it opens with a slotted spoon. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, squeeze the shells together and pull out  the seaweedy "beard". Put the mussels in serving bowls and keep warm.

Strain cooking liquid through a fine-meshed sieve into a pot. Bring to the boil, lower heat and add cream.

Stir on a medium heat just to warm it through without boiling.

Season to taste, then pour over the mussels. Serve sprinkled with the chopped parsley leaves, and be sure to have plenty of crusty bread on hand to mop up the delicious juices.

Serves 4 as a rustic entree, light lunch or supper

Wine match

Beer is a classic match for mussels, but in my house we prefer the product of the grape. The shellfish themselves are highly savoury, and the juice in which they are cooked has a creamy texture.

That points us in the direction of an oak-aged chardonnay, and there is no finer example of the style than Tony Bish's Sacred Hill Riflemans Chardonnay 2009. Made from hand-picked grapes and aged for a year in French barrels, this small-production wine has aromas reminiscent of Weet-Bix and warm toast leading to a deliciously creamy, peach-like flavour with a lively citric edge.

Its $55 price tag places it at the top end of New Zealand chardonnays, but it is worth noting that English wine writer and Master of Wine Andrew Caillard tasted it recently and wrote, "Move over Puligny-Montrachet". This highly sought-after white burgundy sells for around $275 a bottle.