You will find a number of excellent restaurants around this part of Cornwall serving local seafood. However, if you fancy being a bit more adventurous, here is a step by step guide to harvesting, preparing and cooking your own sea mussels.

Autumn is a perfect season for harvesting mussels. The weather is still quite mild to be out on the beach and it is outside of the breeding season for mussels making it more sustainable to harvest them. It also gives you a fun beach activity if the weather is not for sunbathing or swimming.

Step 1: The harvesting
Find a good place to harvest the mussels, in Cornwall you have a great choice of beaches with good quality, clean water. St. Austell Bay is particularly known for good quality of water with mussel farms moving to this area because of this.

Make sure you ask the locals or do some checks online to ensure there are no sewage outlets nearby and that the water quality is good for mussel harvesting. Mussels grow on rocky surfaces in colonies, you will need to go at low tide so that they're exposed. (always check tide times and take care on the rocks). Try not to pick them in the summer months and only pick the big ones. You just need to twist and pull and they come right off. Pop them into a container filled with sea water (a plastic bucket will do).

Step 2: Preparation

Keep your harvested mussels in the bucket with cool seawater for a few hours, this will allow them to purge any sand or debris. DO NOT put them into fresh water until you are about to cook them as this kills them instantly. If any are open, give them a sharp tap, if they don't close, discard them. Some of the mussels you picked will most likely be covered in barnacles (tiny little shells), you can scrape these off under running cold water with the back of a butter knife or something similar. You also need to pull off the stubborn little beards, just tug on them with your fingers. Give them a good wash and they are ready for cooking!

Step 3: Cooking
There are different recipe you can go for, all pretty simple. The classic white wine and cream sauce is my favorite. The amounts are approximate for about 1kg of fresh mussels but of course feel free to tweak these to taste.

Ingredients:
-2 cloves garlic
-a couple of table spoons butter
-Fresh parsley
-1 onion or a couple of shallots
-100ml of double cream
-50ml of white wine
-salt to taste

Method:
-Soften the garlic and shallots in the butter in a fairly big pan (it should be half full with mussels in).
-Turn up the heat, add in the mussels with wine then cover and steam them for about 4 minutes or until open. Shake the pan every now and then.
-Add the chopped parsley and cream and remove from the stove.

Serve with fresh bread and enjoy!

Rockleigh place apartments provide you with a well equipped kitchenette so you can easily try this yourself.