Carnet Connoisseur: Oysters in America Raw food that’s simply delicious James Paxton
A Few Facts about Oysters
The Romans were great oyster eaters, but did you know that they were not eating the shallow oysters we are consuming?
They were eating flat oysters, Ostrea edulis, the Bellon type you can still find in France, in England, in Holland. In the 1950s, flat oysters were imported to Maine and they are now also farmed in Washington State and California.
Flat oysters are a disappearing species due to the appetite of man and Marteilia refringens and Bonamia ostrae, horrible little parasites that are depriving us of the best oysters one can eat while drinking a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé.
A very expensive dish today, oysters in the nineteenth century were very cheap and mainly eaten by the working classes. In his fascinating book, The Big Oyster, History of the Half Shell, Mark Kurlansky describes the role of the oyster in New York’s nineteenth-century development when the estuary of the Hudson River was still the largest oyster bed in the world. How many millions of oysters were eaten before the shellfish beds were closed after the outbreak of typhoid in 1916, God only knows!
Oysters are considered one of the great sensual foods in the world. They may or may not be an aphrodisiac, but a dozen oysters have half as many calories—some 100 to 120 —as 3.5 ounces of caviar. The down side is that they are bad for cholesterol.
And once in a while one of these brainless animals will try to send you “ad patres” as the Romans said. Two reasons for that:
- Oysters are among the few animals we still eat raw, and if we cook them, they have to be alive at the beginning of the process. Dead oysters are simply not tolerated by our digestive system. - Oysters are filter feeders. Normally oysters filter pollutants and either eat them or shape them into small packets that they discard. Normally. My grandmother, who was a teetotaler, nevertheless always drank a glass of white wine with the half dozen oysters she ate twice a year. The story was that the parents of one of her friends had died of typhus in 1916 for not having drunk white wine with their oysters. All oyster aficionados we know have been sick at least once. You are going to retort that all fugu aficionados are sick only once.
If you are already an oyster connoisseur, you will be familiar with Rowan Jacobsen’s The Oyster Guide and will no doubt have tried most of the species listed in that essential book, of which there are more than 100.
If you enjoy oysters but are more a gourmet than an oceanographer, follow the rule: in Rome do as the Romans do, and eat the local oyster.
Our favorite East coast oysters:
- Malpeque from Prince Edward Island. - Beausoleil or Caraquet from the New Brunswick Coast. - Tatamagouche from Nova Scotia, although they get very spawny in summer, and this is an acquired taste. - Glidden Point from Maine.
In Massachusetts ask for Wellfleet, although they may at first seem a bit salty. Bluepoint has been the New York Oyster since the early 1800s. If you like oysters a bit larger, ask for Saddle Rock. Try the Rapp from the Rappahannock River. These Virginia oysters are not as salty as other Chesapeake oysters. They are fleshier and best in winter.
And on the West Coast :
British Columbia is home to the Kusshi oyster, a small- sized oyster with a very clean flavor. The Kusshi is the perfect start for those who have never eaten oysters. The Northern Puget Sound produces several kinds of hollow oysters and a superb flat oyster comes out of the Wescott Bay.
A bit farther south, the Hood Canal is home to several types of oysters, the Hama Hama being the most famous. The Hama Hama is indeed a great oyster—big, firm, and with a slight taste of cucumber. The American oyster connoisseur generally likes small oysters, oysters that are some three years old. The older they are, the bigger they get, but remember that size also varies with the species. Hama Hama are usually no less than five years old when they reach your plate.
The Olympia is the native oyster of the North American Pacific coast. A small oyster about the size of a silver dollar with a slightly coppery taste, it is on the half shell the perfect oyster for the novice.
The name derives from the city of Olympia, Washington, in the Puget Sound, which, in the nineteenth century, was the center of a burgeoning oyster industry. By the 1860s, the Californian coast north of San Francisco had run out of oysters and by 1900 the Olympias were almost entirely exhausted in Washington and Oregon.
In the 1920s, growers introduced the Pacific Oyster, Crassostreas gigas, from Japan, with incredible success. In the 1960s, the Pacific Oyster was also introduced to Europe on a large scale, and today most of the hollow oysters offered in restaurants and markets all over the world are in
fact Pacific Oysters.
California grows excellent oysters at Tomales Bay and Hog Island and if you want oysters grown in the cleanest waters go for Drake’s Bay.
And with your oysters, you can have lemon, shallots, pepper, or Tabasco sauce. As long as you savor them with a glass of white wine, preferably sauvignon.
