Mussels With Saffron Aioli

The tastiest entertaining ideas are often the simplest. This French way of serving mussels makes for an impressive cocktail party platter where guests can help themselves. Plus, and I promise not to tell your friends, it is ridiculously easy!

My friend Valentina sent me this recipe idea. She often has exchange students staying at her house and one of them was from France and she made them this dish and they all loved it. It's simple and involves mixing mayonnaise, saffron and garlic to make a saffron aioli. Then you dollop it onto the mussels and it's done!

I made these mussels for New Year's Eve. We had a quiet one this year. None of our friends were really do anything for it and it tends to have so much pressure attached to it. Normally we would go away but with the bushfires affecting so many areas that wasn't possible. It also felt a bit strange to celebrate when so much of the country were going through something so awful.

I woke up that morning thinking about New Year's Eve. For some reason I never tend to enjoy NYE but I enjoy every other day of the year. So what if I treated NYE like any other day and just had a normal day?

I started off having lunch with one of my favourite people Ivy, ran some errands (it was lovely with hardly anyone on the roads). Then I came home and made these mussels. It was so fast that I had an enormous platter ready in about 15 minutes. The most time consuming thing was opening up and laying out all the mussels on the platter.

Then I bought the final season to Silicon Valley one of my favourite shows and Mr NQN and I watched it after going through an enormous platter of these mussels. I was nodding off to sleep around 11:45pm and was dozing when it struck midnight. Around 12:15am I woke up and noticed the time. "Happy New Year," I said to Mr NQN sleepily and then fell back asleep again.

So tell me Dear Reader, how did you celebrate New Year's Eve? What is your secret to having a great NYE?