
If you know Sardinia, you know what I am talking about: fregola is a very special kind of pasta, which is usually served with mussels and claims, but I personally adore it even with meat rolls. Today we are talking about fregola with mussels, a delicious first course which will bring you to the white beaches and blue sea of this wonderful island.
To have the best result we have to buy very fresh mussels and have ripe tomatoes for the sauce: so let's begin!
Serving Size 4
300 gr sardinian fregola
800 gr fresh mussels
500 gr ripe fresh tomatoes
1/2 glass of white dry wine
2 clove of garlic
Fresh minced parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper q.b.
Direction
Once you have all the ingredients, you can start cleaning the mussels very well, washing them under cool water and cleaning their shelves from each kind of impurity, scraping them with a knife.
Once they are clean put them into a pot with 1 clove of garlic, a couple of parsley stem, the white wine, cover and let them open with steam. When they have cooled down a little, filter the cooking liquid and put it aside.
Put the olive oil with the other clove of garlic in a large pot, when it starts to fry add the fresh ripe tomatoes, salt and let it reduce a little with medium heat: no more than 10 minutes.
At this point add the fregola pasta and start cooking adding one ladle at a time of the mussels liquid till the fregola is going to be ready: you will need around 10/15 minutes, we love it "al dente" so no more than 10/11 minutes.
When the fregola is ready, add the mussels, some fresh parsley if you like, black pepper and serve.
Serve with a very cold, white wine: Vermentino di Sardegna could be a good option.
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