Cream of Mussel Soup with Saffron

Mussels, if British, used to be big and old and covered in barnacles, or - if you were lucky - imported bouchots brought over from Normandy. Pollution of our native beds and the heavy commercial development of farmed mussels in Holland mean that most of what you can buy today is Dutch. They will have been efficiently cleaned and be of a uniform size, but are not as tasty as the French or British mussels of old. Since shellfish poisoning is potentially fatal, it is pe