Mussel Salad with Pasta and Capers: Warm Italian Recipe

Mussel Salad with Pasta and Capers

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Italians eat pasta constantly and in large amounts. They simply boil it, add it to soups and make salads with it. Good pasta cooked in salted water leaves the water almost clear, because it doesn’t release starch.

Alongside familiar spaghetti, the most common type of pasta, a good share of the range is small pasta in all kinds of shapes. Small round pasta makes a great warm mussel salad: its size and shape match large shelled mussels.

The name of a pasta usually tells you its type and size. For example, if the ending “oni”, meaning “big”, is added to spaghetti, you get spaghettoni, big spaghetti. If “ette” or “etti” is added, you get small spaghetti, and so on.

There are some very interesting kinds of pasta for salads. Often it is an assortment of small pasta in every shape and color, sold as “insalatonde”, a mix of shaped pasta. Usually three or four varieties with roughly the same cooking time are mixed. Thanks to their fancy shapes, they hold sauce beautifully and go well with all sorts of salad ingredients.

Cappelletti come from the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. In the local dialect they are called “capsules”, and they are a must on the Christmas table. The filling is usually pork, chicken or cottage cheese, though cappelletti without filling in a salad are not unusual. Italian pasta salads are really something. Just think of pasta salad with mozzarella and basil, or a Mediterranean penne salad. They are always delicious and filling. Today we’ll make a mussel salad from cappelletti, with a caper sauce. By the way, mussel recipes are always very varied, so try, for example, the mussel salad recipe. How to clean and cook mussels, I explained separately, and next to it in this series is pasta with mussels.

Ingredients

2 servings

For the pasta

  • Cappelletti pasta 150 g
  • Water for cooking the pasta 1.5 l
  • Salt for cooking the pasta 10.5 g (7 g per 1 l of water)

For the salad

  • Mussels (meat) 200 g
  • Water for cooking the mussels as needed
  • Red onion 1
  • Vinegar 1 tbsp (for the onion)
  • Black olives 6-8
  • Parmesan 50 g
  • Basil (green) 5-6 sprigs
  • Ground black pepper to taste

For the sauce

  • Garlic 1 clove
  • Capers 1 tbsp (10 g)
  • Olive oil 2 tbsp
  • Salt a pinch

Step-by-step recipe

Preparation

The onion needs to marinate for a few hours, so it is best to prepare it ahead.

  1. Marinate the onion: cut it into very thin strips and cover with 1 tbsp of vinegar for a few hours, which gives the mussel salad a pleasant tang. Then rinse off the vinegar and squeeze the onion dry.

  1. Cook the pasta until fully done in boiling salted water: for 1.5 l of water, 10.5 g of salt (7 g per 1 l). Cooking time is on the package. Drain in a colander.

    Mussels, black olives.

  2. Boil the mussel meat in boiling water for 3-4 mins. No longer, or the mussels can turn tough and unpleasant.

  3. Chop the Parmesan and green basil leaves in a blender. Pit the black olives and cut them into very thin rings.

    Preparing all the ingredients.

Caper sauce

Few people know what capers are. Capers (Capparis) are a tall shrub that grows all around the Mediterranean and has been used by people since ancient times. The ancient Greeks already traded in capers. What is eaten are the unopened flower buds of the caper bush (Capparis spinosa). The buds are usually pickled or preserved in vinegar. Capers have a pleasant, slightly sharp flavor that is great for salads and pizza. Cooking also uses so-called jonjoli, a Caucasian relative of the caper.

Capers are usually sold in small jars, really small ones. You don’t need more, since a full dish takes only a few capers.

  1. Make the sauce: in a mortar, grind one garlic clove with a pinch of salt to a paste, add 1 tbsp of capers (10 g) and keep grinding until the mixture is like a puree. Then add olive oil in small portions and keep grinding. You should end up with a thick, smooth sauce with the consistency of honey.

    Making a sauce from garlic, capers and olive oil.

Assembling the salad

  1. Layer the salad: put the warm cooked cappelletti on a large plate.

    Putting the cooked pasta on a plate.

    Top with the boiled mussels and add a little pepper.

    Adding the mussels.

    Then add the black olives cut into rings.

    Adding the olive rings.

    Last, add the marinated onion.

    Adding the marinated onion.

  2. Drizzle the salad with the garlic and caper dressing and sprinkle with the Parmesan and basil mixture.

Serving

  1. Toss the salad before bringing it to the table, or right at the table.

    Mussel salad

Calories and macros

630 kcal

Serving ≈ 360 g

  • Protein32 g21% of kcal
  • Fat25 g37% of kcal
  • Carbs63 g42% of kcal

100 g173 kcalProtein 8.8 gFat 6.9 gCarbs 17.5 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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