Linguine with Mussels & Radish Salad

This was Linguine with mussels.

The pasta was barely seen, but I am sure perfectly Al dente cooked pasta was in the bowl. Ok, let me back to the time when we were at Wegmans. We had decided the dinner would be pasta with mussels and talking how many mussels we should buy. "8 piece per plate, so total 16 pieces?" Then we found bags of mussels on the ice. Mussels were relatively inexpensive. Just about 6-7 dollars per 2 pounds. "Is it too much? But most of all are shells, right?" So, we picked one bag up and didn't think about the consequence too much, I suppose. I washed the mussels one by one, and cooked garlic and a red chili pepper in olive oil, tossed all mussels with Vermouth in the pan, covered and cooked until I saw steam between the lid and the pan. Ta-da! All mussels were beautifully open! Garnishing with the fresh parsley. Meanwhile I boiled pasta. Ok, there was no space in the pan with the mussels to toss pasta together. I divided the pasta in two bowls.

And then divided the mussels, placing them on the top of the two bowls with the pasta... I built a mountain of the mussels. Poured the delicious juice from the mussels over the two mountains of mussels. And more parsley...

I knew J would say something. "Ridiculous!", he said when he saw the bowls. I agreed with you, J. It was like eating a steamed mussel pot. The mussels were delicious. After we were so satisfied with hundreds of mussels, the pasta hidden beneath said Hello! I became full at the moment, but I knew that pasta soaked all the juice was the most delicious part in the meal. I couldn't miss it. And I finished all the pasta and didn't regret. The pasta was the best.

Before breaking the mussels fortress, we had a small bowl of radish salad - shredded radish, grape tomato and thinly sliced cucumber with ginger-sesame dressing.

The radishes came from J's parents' garden. I forgot what kind of the radishes were, but they tasted sweet and looked like miniature Daikon radishes. We enjoyed the fresh radishes very much. Thank you J's parents!