You won’t get buff, but your taste buds will get a workout at the 19th annual Penn Cove Mussel Festival.
The meaty gems of Penn Cove are the guests of honor at this weekend’s mollusk celebration in Coupeville. Like oysters, mussels are not for everyone, but this weekend they’ll be prepared by two people who know them well.
Rawle Jefferds, co-owner of Penn Cove Shellfish, is a self-proclaimed mussel lover who eats the sea snacks every day. “I might have to take a little break from them now and then, but I honestly love them,” Jefferds said.
Rawle and brother and co-owner Ian Jefferds raise more than one million pounds of the delicacies off Whidbey Island each year and ship them to half a dozen countries worldwide. The “farmers of the ocean” grew up working on the farm since 1975 and purchased the shellfish aquaculture business from their father in 1986.
Penn Cove Shellfish was the only shellfish farm in North America at the time and has expanded to include farming of Mediterranean mussels, Manila clams, and Pacific and Kumamoto oysters.
“People that grew up here are some of our toughest sales,” Jefferds said. “They used to use them as perch bait growing up.”
Now, people come from miles to gobble and slurp up the star of Penn Cove, said festival coordinator and organizer Rita Kuller. Kuller said visitors have a rare opportunity to sample mussels prepared by the owners of the oldest and largest mussel farm in North America.
“Ian and Rawle are the teachers of the chefs for this product,” Kuller said. “There are obviously millions of pounds of mussels that are sold all around the world, but this is really the only weekend of the year where the Jefferdses are out there doing the preparation.”
Ian Jefferds prepares mussels in the Penn Cove Mussel and Beer Tent, while Rawle Jefferds demonstrates inside festival headquarters at the Coupeville recreation hall on Saturday and Sunday. Visitors can learn how to prepare and cook mussels and ask the Jefferds brothers questions about the shellfish.
“Those are two fabulous cooks who really know what they’re doing in the preparation of mussels,” Kuller said.
Each year, the festival goes through approximately 2,000 pounds of mussels. With an average of 30 mussels per pound, that’s 60,000 for one weekend. It is a miniscule amount compared to the 30 million per year that Penn Cove Shellfish, harvests, distributes and exports.”Demand keeps growing and growing. Those numbers are growing steadily,” Rawle Jefferds said.
He said the key to producing Penn Cove Shellfish’s sought-after delicacy is that they are rope-cultured.
“They are suspended from floating rafts that keep the mussels in the water 24 hours a day,” Jefferds said. “They don’t get beat up like an intertidal mussel. It produces a fat meat.”
Along with cooking demonstrations from the Jefferds brothers, the festival hosts a mussel chowder contest where local restaurants prepare special recipes for festival-goers to judge. With a ballot and pen in hand, participants can swallow an ample sample of chowder with a winner declared once all the ballots are returned to the festival headquarters. Contest ballots are $5 and available at festival headquarters. Ballots entitle participants to samples from about 10 restaurants.
“Over time, every restaurant that’s entered has won,” Kuller said. “These are restaurants that think about this all year. Some of the recipes aren’t even on the regular menu.”
A mussel-eating contest for people of all ages is held each afternoon in the headquarters. The idea is to shuck and eat as many mussels as possible in a minute, Kuller said.
Winners of the recipe contest held earlier this year are announced during the festival.
Additional activities include a craft gallery, “Ease Your Mussels Massage,” children’s activities at the wharf, scavenger hunts for adults and music from the Shifty Sailors, a group of roaming entertainers performing sea chanteys. An art walk will take place at 5 p.m. Saturday.
Boat rides take people to the shellfish farm and feature an underwater camera showing the farmed mollusks.
“We want to show off what we do,” Rawle Jefferds said. “We like to show people that (mussels) are not just a tres gourmet thing at the finest restaurants. They’re quick and easy to prepare and you can have a lot of fun with them.”
Reporter Tanya Sampson: 425-339-3479 or tsampson@heraldnet.com.
Penn Cove Mussel Festival
Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Downtown Coupeville, including Coupeville Recreation Hall.
Cost: Most festival events are free. Ballot for chowder tasting and Mussel Shuttle to restaurants, $5. Boat ride to Penn Cove Shellfish farm, $8. Mussel-eating contest entry, $6.
Information: 360-678-1100, www.penncovemusselfestival.com.
Penn Cove Mussel Festival
Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Downtown Coupeville, including Coupeville Recreation Hall.
Cost: Most events free. Ballot for chowder tasting and Mussel Shuttle to restaurants, $5. Boat ride to Penn Cove Shellfish farm, $8. Mussel-eating contest entry, $6.
Information: 360-678-1100, www.penncovemusselfestival.com.
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