Step by step

Add the chopped parsley, garlic and breadcrumbs, and a little oil

Tips
Do not open the mussels when raw! If you do you risk inadvertently giving your guests a nasty case of food poisoning. Rely, rather, on the traditional method of cooking in a saucepan: a good blast of heat will cook the mussels and at the same time all the healthy ones will open; any that do not should be discarded.
Trivia
Mussels are known as ‘cozze’ or ‘mitili’ in Italian, but depending on the region in which they are harvested they may have other names: thus there are ‘peoci’ in Venice, ‘datteri neri’ in Tuscany, or ‘di muscoli’ in the northwest.