Recipes
Pastry
Bread
Southern spring moules with cornbread batons

Southern spring moules with cornbread batons

Bread American cuisine

If you're throwing a thrifty dinner party, this probably means two things, 1. all of your other meals are thrifty and 2. your guests don't have a huge disposable income either. This means showing off with some cous cous spinach chickpea extravaganza may be tasty, but your guests probably ate something similar yesterday. Mussels are one of our favorite ingredients to prepare for dinner parties. They cook quickly, are surprisingly inexpensive, and provide guests with something that’s a bit out of the ordinary. Their mild of-the-sea flavor means that they are the prefect base for a variety of flavor combinations but here, we did a take on the classic French Moules Marinière. Instead of traditional ingredients, we used budget friendly southern-inspired options like lager (in lieu of white wine), seasonal spring Vidalia onions (instead of shallots), and ramped up the flavor profile with smoky maple bacon and fresh lemons. Next, every good mussel dish requires a vehicle to sop up the sauce. Enter Cornbread Batons: quick and easy, dense buttermilk cornbread, we cut into sticks, and seared off in bacon drippings. The result? A take on a classic with southern staples and a buttermilk cornbread that stays together when dunked, dipped, and soaked with broth, for a meal that's as filling as it is flavorful, and a little bit fancy.