A typical summer and maritime dish: mussels au gratin!

Ingredients for a baking dish: 2 Kg mussels, 300g bread, 1 lemon and ½ (one uses both the juice and peel, half only the peel), parsley, 3 cloves of garlic, white pepper, chilli, 50ml extra virgin olive oil.

Wash the mussels thoroughly under running water, discarding the open/broken ones. Put them in a large pot, without adding anything else, cover with the lid and put on high fire. Turn often without opening the pot, for a few minutes, until the mussels have opened and then remove them from the heat and let them cool. It is important to keep the mussels on the fire as little as possible, not have to bake, but only open just enough to separate the two valves.

In the meantime prepare the stuffing: chop the bread, the garlic and the parsley, which you will join in a bowl with the rind of grated lemons and a sprinkled of chili peppers. Adjust salt and pepper and add the oil, white wine and the juice of a lemon to the wire, stirring, so that the liquid part is evenly distributed.

Pick up the mussels and separate the valves, keeping only one with the clam and eliminate the other. Fill each valva with a little filling with a teaspoon. Distribute all the mussels in a baking dish, very close to each other but not overlapping. Bake in the upper medium shelf of the oven, preheated to 200 °c, with the grill function. It takes 5-10 ' of baking, depending on the oven: as soon as they are golden are ready!