Moules Marinière

I first tasted this dish when I was six years old. Like many small children, I was reluctant to eat shellfish at first, but on this occasion my mother persuaded me to taste hers. Unfortunately for my mother, I not only tasted her dish, but finished the lot, and I have loved mussels ever since. On Noirmoutier I used to collect them from the rocks in front of the house, pick the bay leaves off the tree in the next-door neighbour’s garden, dig for the garlic in the dunes, where it grew wild, a