This is really simple and completely elegant, impressive, festive, and french country filling, i.e. a version of comfort food, especially when you sop the bread up in the sauce. We recommend putting away the good tablecloth.
2 mussels or clams
white wine
1 white onion
1 clove of garlic
parsley
thyme
3 tbs butter
Scrub and wash two quarts of mussels (or clams). Put into a soup kettle with ½ cup of dry white wine, 1 white onion chopped fine, 1 clove of garlic minced, a sprinkle of thyme, ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley, fresh pepper to taste (no salt). Cook the mussels (or clams) over a medium-high flame and shake the pan a few times. About 6 minutes until the shells have opened. Remove and keep warm.
Pour as much of the cooking liquid into a saucepan as you can without getting the sand in the bottom from the shellfish. Add 3 tbs butter creamed with 1 tsp of flour to the liquid in the saucepan and reduce the sauce over a medium flame for 2 to 3 minutes.
Serve the shellfish in soup plates. Pour the sauce evenly over them.
Serves four as a first course. Two as a main dish. One for the table.