Moules mouclade, as big a hit as Beyoncé

Mussels were probably the first thing I ate as a child that I knew at the time was ‘an acquired taste’. They made me feel impossibly grown up, coming with a brigade of bowls, one for the mussels themselves, one for chips, one for bread, one for empty mussel shells, and a little lemon-scented bowl of water to dip my fingers in. My dinner alone must have taken up half the table. From then on, I ordered mussels every time they were on the menu, knowing they would transform me from a gawky 12-year-old girl wearing cargo pants into a veritable sophisticate. But I never once tried moules mouclade.

Like Socrates, Casanova and Beyoncé, mouclade is usually known only by its first name, la mouclade – the ‘moules’ implied by the ‘mouclade’. The dish hails from the coastal town of La Rochelle, in the Poitou-Charentes region of western France, and the mouclade sauce is curried.