How do you like your Crassostrea gigas?
Personally, I like mine cold and salty like the Pacific Ocean from whence they came. I like them small and briny with a mignonette of Champagne peppercorn sorbet. I like them from Bald Point and Totten Inlet. I like them from Pebble Cove and Sister’s Point. Shoot, I even like Crassostrea Sikamea and Ostrea Lurida, especially Ostrea Lurida with their silky texture and buttery flavor.
I’m talking about oysters of course. Perhaps the greatest of the great foods of the sea.
One of the things I never miss when traveling to Seattle, Washington is a plate of oysters. I will cut back on any other vice to be able to order a plate of oysters to be washed down with two, count them, two Kettle One vodka martinis with a twist. Olives over-power the delicate flavor of the oyster in my opinion.
While in Seattle on business this weekend, I shared a plate with my wife and a friend at Elliot’s Oyster House. The waiter brought out an assortment of Crassostrea gigas that were small, full to the lip with that briny juice and as cold as that ocean from which they come.
The sun was shining brightly in a reflecting pool of light blue from the concentrated blue of the sound below. We each ordered a vodka martini to slake our thirst from walking around Pike’s Market all morning and watched the ferries and water taxis pull in and out of the busy seaport.
When the oysters came, we smeared the peppercorn champagne sorbet on and slurped them down as you can only do with an oyster. We savored each bite as if dining in the depths themselves, and washed away the trace of each variety with a hearty swig of vodka.
Oysters are and will always be my favorite seafood. You have to love something that leaves reminders in your very flesh. I still have an oyster knife wound from a battle with a large, grilling oyster during my graduation party from college. It runs across my hand like a little, white half circle. And I look at it each time I eat and oyster and the memory is not all bad.
All the days spent shucking oysters on that private beach in Yachats, Oregon come back to me any time I wish. Cool, October days grilling a salmon on a beach fire and shucking oysters for hours and washing it all down with craft-brewed lagers. The oysters and the beer mere condiments for the company we kept. But as condiments go, oysters and beer added so much life to those parties.
I’ve always said the mountains offer a lot of good food to match the good living, but in my humble opinion, the oysters from around these parts just don’t match up to the ones from the coast. No offense to the Rock Creek Lodge and their ubiquitous summer festival of course.
Bon Appetit,
Big Foodie