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Mussels with Tomato Sauce
(Arselle alla livornese) Chop fine half an onion and put it on the fire with oil and a pinch of pepper. When the onion begins to brown add a pinch of parsley chopped not very fine and after put in the mussels with tomato sauce (No. 12) or tomato paste diluted in water. Shake them often and when they are open, put them over slices of toast prepared beforehand and arranged on a plate. 122
The original assumes you know the quantities, so the proportions below are a starting point rather than a correction. The one thing that governs the dish is heat: the shellfish go into an already fragrant, simmering sauce and come out the moment they gape.
- Scale itHalf an onion and a pinch of parsley suit about 2 lb of mussels in the shell, with roughly a cup of tomato sauce or two tablespoons of paste let down with water. That feeds two as a main course or four as an antipasto over toast.
- "Arselle" are not really musselsThe Italian title names arselle, the small Tyrrhenian clams common in Livorno; the English title gives them as mussels. Either works, and small clams such as Manila or littleneck are closer to the original.
- Sauce No. 12The book's tomato sauce is a plain sieved sauce of tomatoes cooked with oil, onion and aromatics. Any plain, unsweetened tomato sauce stands in; tomato paste diluted with water, as the recipe allows, is the quicker route and gives a thinner, brighter result.
- Clean before cookingScrub the shells and pull the beards from mussels. Clams benefit from half an hour in salted water to spit out sand, which no amount of shaking in the pan will fix.
- Time on the heatCovered, over lively heat, mussels open in 3 to 5 minutes and small clams in 5 to 8. Shellfish held in the sauce much beyond that shrink and turn tough, so pull the pan as soon as most have gaped.
- Unopened shellsDiscard any that stay shut after the rest have opened rather than prying them; they are the ones most likely to have been dead going in.
- The toastCut slices of a firm country loaf, grill or fry them in oil, and put them down dry so they can drink the sauce. Do not soak them in advance or they collapse under the shells.
- Salt lastNo salt appears in the recipe, and the liquor released by the shellfish is already saline. Taste the sauce after the shells open and adjust then.
Alla livornese marks this as cooking from Livorno, the port that grew up as Tuscany's free harbor and developed a whole repertoire of tomato-and-oil shellfish dishes, of which cacciucco is the best known. Arselle is the Tuscan word for the small wedge clams raked out of the sand along that coast, and the dish is essentially the cheapest thing a harborside kitchen could serve: a handful of shellfish, oil, onion, a spoonful of tomato, and bread underneath to catch what the shells give up. The 1919 Italian Cook Book was addressed to English-speaking American households, and the English title gives the shellfish as mussels rather than clams.