(bright music) - Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin, and this is "American Masters at Home."

Simplest way to do mussels is the moules marinière, so called.

You get that in all the bistros in France, certainly in Belgium.

It's a very easy way of doing it.

Basically, I count a pound of mussels per person.

So I have here, garlic.

Crush it to remove the skin.

Crush it to remove the skin again, this one.

I need about...

Here we are.

Yeah, about a good two teaspoons of garlic here.

Okay.

In there, I have my two pounds of mussels.

I'm going to put about three quarters of a cup of white wine.

How about three quarters, three quarters of a cup of chopped onion.

A bit of herbes de Provence, or Italian seasoning, the same way.

About three, four tablespoons of parsley.

Dash of salt.

We can always put more salt after, depending on the seasoning of your mussels.

Some mussels are, of course, more salt than others.

Pepper, and that's it.

This is going to come to a boil.

As soon as it boils, cover.

Stir it a couple of times.

They are going to open.

It takes five, six minutes.

They will open, and that's the way we serve them, the moules marinière, straight.

Okay.

That's about it.

Now I put a tablespoon of olive oil here.

Should have put it at the beginning.

This is a way, so called, moules marinière.

You're going to add.

In the bistro in France, in Belgium, you do a lot of juice with that.

And it's always served with French fries in Belgium.

So this is the moules marinière.

However, we're going to do another dish called moules poulette, And for that, we're going to separate each of the shell.

I'm gonna put it in there and put back the juice in there.

I'm gonna thicken this, reduce it a little bit and thicken it, and then finish it with a bit of cream.

That will be called the moules poullete.

P-O-U-L-L-E-T-E.

So here for the time being, we're going to open this.

Sometimes your mussels, some time of the year are much bigger than some other time of the year.

And that beautiful whitish or golden color, they change during the year.

Highly seasoned, yeah.

And now, I'm going to put a teaspoon and a half of potato starch.

Or they say you can do the roux, even flour.

The tablespoon or so of water.

This is the type of thing that when you dilute this, you add that to a sauce, and they thicken on contact, as soon as they touch it, so it's very easy to use.

You can see the mixture now.

It's kind of oily, just about the way you want it.

Into that, we're going to put about a quarter of a cup of heavy cream.

Yep, more than enough.

And the moules poullete here, it's not done very often, but it's great on pasta, like you had clam and pasta, you would serve that on pasta, or with rice, with noodle, with couscous.

Any of this will work pretty well.

Taste it, bring it to a boil.

Absolutely delicious.

So here is the moules poullete.

We are going to put it on top of it here.

That would be two very, very generous portions.

Put a bit of chives on top.

The moules poullete.

Happy cooking.

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Thank you, and happy cooking.