Lance Stroll's Culinary Tribute To His Belgian Heritage
Aston Martin drivers love to pick dishes I already cooked in 2023
Welcome to Grand Prix Gastronomy! In 2024, this series is dedicated to cooking the favorite dishes of every driver on the grid.
The Foods That Lance Stroll Loves
Did you know the Aston Martin teammates were the only two drivers who selected a favorite dish that I'd already cooked? Fernando Alonso opted for paella as his favorite dish — something I'd cooked for the Spanish Grand Prix in 2023! Now, we've got Lance Stroll selecting mussels and fries as his favorite dish! You'll definitely recognize moules-frites as last year's Belgian GP dish.
When this happened with Fernando, I made a different version of paella to help show different preparations. Today, I'll be doing the same thing! Instead of white wine steamed mussels, I'm taking a different look at the homemade mussel.
This fact comes from a Lance profile in The Gentleman's Journal. Stroll and Lando Norris share Belgian roots, and both have a soft spot for the Belgian-style fries. But in Lance's case, that does not include the mayo. From the article: “Mayonnaise not so much,” Stroll laughs. “But yes, French fries! I also like me some mussels. And a waffle — ain’t nothing wrong with a waffle! And maple syrup on that waffle, bringing Canada and Belgium together!”
You literally do not need to twist my arm to get me to make mussels or fries or waffles. Lance has good taste.
This Week's Recipes
For my recipes this week, I decided to opt for something a lil fun. Because I made a very authentic mussels recipe last year for the Belgian GP, I wanted to put together a different sauce for 2024. I opted for a deliciously spicy fra diavolo recipe from Andrew Zimmern at Food & Wine.
I turned to Taste Atlas for my eternal pommes frites base (though at this point it's kind of second nature!).
Finally came the big thing: the Liège waffles. These were the part of the dish that I wanted to keep fairly authentic, and I found a great recipe from The Kitchen Whisperer that details the differences between American waffles and Liège waffles, and also walks through (with photos!) the necessary steps and recommended equipment. I like my details.
Core Recipes
Cooking Mussels, Fries, And Waffles
First things first: because Liège waffles are made with a yeasted dough, I highly recommend getting started on these the day before you intend to cook them. The recipe I chose recommends doing a “cold ferment,” which basically means you let your dough rise slowly overnight in the fridge as opposed to over the course of a few hours in a warm oven. Cold fermenting is great because it gives your yeast more time to work its delicious magic, which leads to a tastier dough. I highly recommend it.
So: the day before you cook your waffles, get a stand mixer ready (or prepare for a whole lot of hand-kneading) and warm water, milk, and instant yeast into a bowl, then stir in eggs, honey, and vanilla paste. Then, a half-cup at a time, mix in your flour until you've got a dough that's starting to pull away from the sides of your bowl. Slowly mix in some room temperature butter, then pop your dough into a bowl.
You'll let this dough rise for a few hours, then you'll fold it a few times (in the bowl) before popping it into the fridge to rise overnight.
The next day, about two hours before you want to make the waffles, get the dough out of the fridge to let it come to room temperature. Then, knead in pearl sugar and divide your dough into 12 pieces as your waffle iron heats. Cook up one waffle at a time — and snack your way through a few of them while you go!
Since I was serving everything together all at once, I peeled and sliced my fries before I kneaded the dough so that I could pop ‘em in a bowl of cold water and leave them to soak in the fridge for 30+ minutes.
Then prep everything for your mussels: garlic, onion, and shallot. You'll want to clean your mussels, too: Give them a wash and a good scrub, and pull off any “beards” that they may have.
Here's the point in the blog where I have to make a terrible confession. I bought bad mussels.
This was partially my fault and also partially not. I went to Whole Foods for the mussels and asked for three pounds. The person behind the counter then pulled out pre-bagged mussels, and added a few loose extras on top to hit the weight.
The problem with the pre-bagged mussels is that you can't actually see them. When buying mussels, you want to be able to pick out ones that have a tightly-shut shell; that means the meat inside is still fresh. An open or cracked shell means the mussel has gone bad. Every single one of my pre-bagged mussels had either popped open or had a badly cracked shell. The handful of loose mussels were closed, but I'd mixed them together with the spoiled mussels while I was washing them. I thought I picked out the good ones, but there were a few that had a crack in the shell that I hadn't noticed, so when I steamed them, I effectively steamed them in goop.
HOWEVER. The fra diavolo sauce was insanely good, and I cooked some shrimp the following day using the same cooking method here, and it was great. So, it wasn't a total loss!
You'll start with your tomato sauce. Cook up some onion, basil, oregano, crushed red pepper and salt until the onion is softened. Then add in white wine and tomato paste, letting it simmer. Then you'll pop in Italian tomato puree and a smidge of sugar. Let it all simmer until it's nice and thick.
In a different pan, you'll heat some olive oil and then quickly fry a shallot, garlic, and crushed red pepper. Pour in your wine and simmer until it reduces by half, then stir in the tomato sauce. When it's simmering, add the mussels, cover, and cook until the mussels have popped open. If you open the pan and some mussels remained closed, throw them out; they're bad. If you open the pan and it smells liked steamed fishy death, then you probably had several bad mussels, and I would recommend not eating this dish.
(If you're doing this version with shrimp, I cooked mine by steaming them in the wine as it reduced, then stirring in the tomato sauce and cooking ‘em until done.)
Finally, the fries. Drain your potatoes and dry them off well as your deep fryer heats to 325 degrees. Fry the potatoes in batches until they're a light golden color, then crank the heat to 375 and fry ‘em again. The first fry effectively cooks the potato through, so it's nice and soft on the inside. The second one makes for a crispy exterior.
The Wine List
For the wine this week, I had a handful of different varietals that I wanted to try, but I ultimately realized I'd gone a little too esoteric for South-Central Texas and instead opted for ol’ reliable: A bottle of Sancerre.
Sancerre's main grape is Sauvignon Blanc that's grown in the Sancerre wine district of France. Even if you don't think you're a Sauv Blanc person, I recommend at least giving a Sancerre a shot, since it's a little less in-your-face than the New World Sauv Blancs you've probably tried.
It's a fruity, mineral-y wine with the mouth-pucker of tart citrus, and it pairs well with seafood — which is primarily why I chose it! It also turned out to be a great match for the french fries I solely had for dinner when I realized I'd cooked a whole bunch of bad mussels!
So, What's The Verdict?
I canNOT tell you how annoyed I am about these damn mussels!
This is one of the risks, not only of living in a landlocked part of Texas, but of shopping for mussels out of season. Let this be your reminder to be a respectfully discerning purchaser when it comes to your food and your money. Just ask the person behind the counter to only select an amount of CLOSED mussels. Yeah, they'll have to take a few extra moments to take care of your order, but also: You should have a right to pick out the edible bits of your food.
The thing that bothers me the most is that the bad mussels were literally so bad that they ruined the few that were good. When I lifted the lid on those bad boys, I could tell that, even though I'd washed them well and thought I picked out all the ick, there remained one terrible mussel that had a crack I'd missed that had steamed its ick onto the good’uns. At that point, I didn't want to chance it. Ya girl had food poisoning DIRECTLY before she went to Le Mans, and I'm not seeking to have that experience again.
The great news, though, is twofold.
First and foremost, the fra diavolo sauce was fucking phenomenal. When it became abundantly clear that I'd only be cooking a handful of mussels out of the three pounds I had made my sauce for, I jarred up a bunch of the sauce for dinner the next night. At that point, I was able to make shrimp fra diavolo pasta, and it ripped. Let this be your heads-up that, if you don't like mussels or can't find them at the store, just put this sauce on literally anything else, and it'll be great.
Secondly: The pommes frites and Liège waffles were so damn good that they made up for the mussels fra diavolo fiasco.
Not to toot my own horn, but I have absolutely nailed it with these homemade fries. I've made this same recipe a few times for GPG, and I've also made it for my husband and I just for the hell of it. Every single time, it seems like it gets better.
That simple fact did a lot to cheer up my mussel grumps. Sure, sometimes our recipes don't work out — whether that means an ingredient was spoiled, or you just didn't quite master a technique — but when you regularly make the same dish, the improvement is tangible. I could literally taste (and feel) how my skill in the french fry department had grown since the first time I tried making them last year. The fries were crispier on the outside, and softer on the inside. It didn't feel like quite such a stressful hassle to make the fries, since I'd learned what to look for when cooking them; when I pulled the fries out to check their color, I could more quickly tell whether they were ready, or whether they needed a few more minutes in the fryer. I didn't need to ponder over that for a few long moments. It just felt natural!
And, y’all. Oh my gawd. The waffles.
I have to admit that I started off a little hesitant about the whole affair, because I'd read so much about how you needed very special ingredients or equipment for Liège waffles, and I didn't want to screw it up. Let me tell you: It worked out well with my panini press-turned-waffle-iron. You could probably put this in any ol’ waffle maker — just make sure you adjust the size of your dough ball accordingly.
If I can make any suggestion here, though: Leave the dough overnight. You technically don't have, to but I did notice that the dough was super super flavorful — and when it was paired with a crispy bite of a melted sugar pearl, there was literally nothing better. A lot of times in cooking, a little patience goes a long way in making your meals turn out great, even when you're skeptical about the whole process.
I literally do not think I've had a better waffle in my life. I know I've certainly never made anything at home that was anywhere near as good. My husband and I munched away on about half of them while we were making them. Do you need a bigger selling feature than that?
Yeah, the mussels themselves turned out to be a little bit of a kerfuffle — but the rest of the Belgian Grand Prix edition of GPG was so good that the mussels didn't even bother me. I came away with recipes I'm going to keep making and a mighty hankering for another Liège waffle.
Lance Stroll, buddy… you've got good taste.
Ready… Set… COOK!
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