Post #4 Oyster Three Ways

Blog Post #4

Oyster Three Ways

Totally not how it sounds, but I had to hook you in right? So,  mid-week my brother Mike calls to catch up a bit, and I mention that my daughter will be with her dad for the weekend and I have no set plans for myself (which always has a nice ring to it for me). “Hey, why don’t I come up?” says my brother. “Really?" I say doubtfully. Mike historically says this only when he has no other better plans in place…he has no trouble cancelling when the better plan surfaces too (his life is a little more exciting than mine), so I was wary. But I wasn’t going to leave my precious weekend up for sabotage this time, so I made him give a firm commitment. Don’t even think of cancelling was my text the next day. No chance was the text back.  Then I got down to business. Bring oysters, I ordered.

One of the best things about my brother Mike is that he is very well connected. His friends run the gamut from CEO’s to commercial fishermen. My father once said he should run for office. So I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass without hitting Mike up for his oyster connection.

The stars must have been aligned because Mike arrived. On time. And carrying the hallmark mesh bag that announces my favorite mollusk is in the house. It might as well have been a Hermes bag, I was that excited. I had been craving oysters for months. Oysters and I go back a long way. I first fell in love with them in my 20’s, eating them raw with my cousin Michelle, while sipping on ice cold martinis at the Legal Seafood bar in Boston one winter day.  It was an epiphany, transforming us into radiant beings and chasing away all signs of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Years later I read this quote from Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast and I thought, here is someone I could have hung out with:

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

 So here was Mike (who also is a damn good cook by the way) and I had a master plan. “We’re going to make the oysters three different ways” I told him. After I assured him that the NFL would be on in the background, he was in.

Strangely enough for someone who cooks, I am afraid of knives and cuts, so Mike was our only shucker. He said it wasn’t the best oyster knife (Yes you need an oyster knife) so after this first photo I couldn’t watch – and yes he needed a bandaid in the end (but you didn’t hear it from me!)

 

Mike the Shucker

We started on a classic recipe – Oysters Rockefeller. This dish has many variations and I let Mike have carte blanche on his own version. He shucked the oysters, drained them (which I found sacrilege!), added a dollop of creamed spinach (we bought that frozen), grated parmesan cheese, cracked pepper, a slice of fontina cheese, and a strip of thick cut, applewood smoked bacon

(cooked). We then baked them at 350 for about 15 minutes. The result was very pretty.

They were good but my honest assessment is to 86 the parmesan. These are busy and rich enough with the fontina to not need the grated parm, which in my opinion overpowers all the other ingredients. But if you are looking to impress, this is a fine choice and again there are variations to choose from. If you want to try the finest and most original version of Oysters Rockefeller, apparently you must go to Antoine’s in New Orleans, who according to MFK Fisher, began serving them in 1889.

And if you want the most entertaining and comprehensive literature about oysters, you must read Ms. Fisher’s Consider The Oyster, which contains no less than 7 essays on the oyster, including history, recipes, nutrional value, and reproductive behavior. It is a “pearl” of a book:

“Oysters are healthful and nourishing, full of all the chemical elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and on and on, which occur regularly in your own body and are necessary to it. They keep you fit, do oysters, with vitamins and such, for energy and what is lightly called ‘fuel value.’ They prevent goiter. They build up your teeth. They keep your children’s legs straight, and when Junior reaches puberty they make his skin clear and beautiful as a soap opera announcer’s dream. They add years to your life…and…they contain more phosphorus than any other food!”

Oh my, and believe me by the time you finish her seven essays you will be the oyster expert amongst your peers. And now onto Oyster the Second Way, which was my choice. Had I done this one right, it would have been my favorite of the three, alas – sometimes in adapting a recipe to a smaller portion, things don’t quite work out. The recipe, Perfect Scalloped Oysters calls for melted butter, salt & pepper added to crushed cracker crumbs. In a 1-1 /2quart baking dish you begin with the cracker mixture and alternate with a layer of oysters. Do this one more time then cover the oysters with a cup of heavy cream with ¼ tsp of Worcestershire mixed into it. Top with remaining crumbs and bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. This would have been AMAZING. But I tried to adapt it to ramekin servings with one oyster each and ended up with too much crumb mixture, and not enough cream. It was a bit dry but the flavor combination was terrific. I would try this again in a heartbeat (whenever I get oysters again).

By now full of oysters, Mike and I saved Oysters the Third Way for the next day. 

Oyster Shooters on a Sunday sounded pretty good and it was going to be my first go at them. This recipe is very straightforward but you need topnotch ingredients. Be forewarned, this actually falls under the category of cocktails. I did a little research on the history of the oyster shooter online and this is what I found :

The Oyster Cocktail or Oyster Shooter, a popular West Coast treat, originated in a San Francisco restaurant around 1860 by a miner back from the gold fields. The miner was loaded down with gold nugget bigger than ballpark peanuts. Being hungry, the miner asked on the the restaurant's waiters to bring him a plate of California raw oysters with some ketchup, horseradish, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and a whiskey cocktail. After drinking the whiskey, he put the oysters into the goblet, adding salt and pepper, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, and ketchup. The restaurant keeper looked on with interest. "What sort of mess do you call that, partner?" he asked. The miner responded, "That is what I call an oyster cocktail." The next day a sign appeared in the restaurant's front window: OYSTER COCKTAIL - FOUR BITS PER GLASS. Within a week, every restaurant in San Francisco was serving the new dish. (Whatscookingamerica.net)

For Mike and I, only the best vodka would do. I also wanted something better than your run of the mill cocktail sauce – for those of us in New England, a place called Stonewall Kitchen is one of the finest purveyors of sauces and condiments so we ended up with a handsome setup:

And so we clinked glasses and shot them. I love Bloody Marys. I love oysters.

But to me this is not a good marriage. To each his own and at least it was an adventure.

In the end I realize that I am an oyster purist. I want to be perched on a comfortable stool. I want to see the rugged gray shell plucked from its tray of white ice. I want to watch it being expertly opened without fear of injury to the shucker. I want to see that the precious oyster liquor remains with the oyster on its half shell. And then I want to raise the shell to my lips and slurp it down. Seconds later, I want to enjoy that immediate feeling of good health that the magical raw oyster has given me. I raise my oyster-free martini in the air and cheer to the oyster!!

And I cheer to my talented brother Mike too, without whom this blog post would not exist!

Happy eating & thanks for reading !

Lisa Leary Gertz