Well, I swore off oysters a couple of decades ago after a reaction that I attributed to them. It was easy because I was just exploring them after refusing them while I grew up along the Chesapeake Bay and other places along the East Coast where they were popular. And mostly I ate them with immoderate amounts of cocktail sauce and horseradish, which I love much more than the mollusk itself. But after reading this book, I might have to give them one more try. In particular, I’m curious about Oyster Stew, a simple dish my Baltimore grandfather apparently loved and that gets a lot of love here from M. F. K. Fisher. She raves about the stew at the Doylestown Inn in particular, of which she says
“It was as good as he had said, the best in the world, and as all the other people had told me…mildly potent, quietly sustaining, warm as love and welcomer in winter.”
But I checked, and while the inn is still there in a present incarnation, the restaurant does not have it on the menu. And it’s a little far from my usual haunts when I’m “back home.” But I did find it still on the menu at one of my favorite places, Bertha’s Mussels in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point. So it’s there I’ll go when this pandemic allows. Despite my origins, I’m more than a bit seafood challenged, so it says a lot about how much I enjoyed this book and how much authority and fun Fisher brought to the subject that I’m contemplating oyster stew. And I’ll spare you my junior high school witticism about what I imagine Oyster Stew would be like aesthetically and texturally. And even with this detour to oysters, it won’t prevent me from my usual pilgrimage to eat as much Maryland Blue Crab as possible, logistically and financially speaking.
I love books about food and cooking for a myriad of reasons, though I haven’t read many fine press editions, mostly because not many exist. I’m the cook at my house and have always nosed about kitchens; my earliest cooking memories are about when I figured out you got to eat more cookies than your brothers if you were the one making them. My first job, coincidentally, was in the kitchen at McGarvey’s Saloon in downtown Annapolis, making crabcakes, crab balls, spiced shrimp, and crab soup for the locals, tourists, and midshipmen. That was in the ‘70s before they had the raw bar, and of course, oysters. I’m also back in the food industry with my on-line tea business (link in the menu above if you’re thirsty and curious).
Even as somewhat of a foodie, I was surprisingly engrossed in Fisher’s mixture of anecdote, science, and recipes delivered in an entertainingly frank and funny writing style. When debunking the myth of abstaining from oysters in months with “r” in them, she states:
Men’s ideas, though, continue to run in the old channels about oysters as well as God and war and women. Even when they know better they insist that months with R in them are all right, but that oysters in June or July or May or August will kill you or make you wish they had. This is wrong, of course, except that all oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing.
And
May and June and July, and of course August, are the months when the waters are warmest almost everywhere along the coasts, and it is remarkably convenient that oysters can only breed their spawn when the temperature is around seventy degrees and in months with no R’s in them. How easy it has been to build a catchy gastronomic rule on the farmers’ interest in better crops!
But don’t worry, whether you say oyster or erster, there are ‘r’s in the name at least. And she also addresses the scapegoating of “bad” oysters as the cause of those “24 hour flu bugs” we often catch after a night of revelry:
There would be no mistaking it, once on the tongue. When people say, “I must have eaten a bad oyster yesterday…I’ve felt a bit dauncy ever since!” you can be sure that they have eaten a great many other things, and have perhaps drunk over well, but that they certainly have not swallowed what is so easy to blame. If so, they would have known the unpleasant truth immediately, because it would taste so thoroughly nasty…and of course within six hours or less they would have been sick as hell, or even dead.
Her sampling of recipes is very interesting as well, especially to illustrate the difference when anyone on the shore could take advantage of the commons to go oystering for a free meal.
An old recipe begins: “Take 300 clean oysters and throw into a pot filled with nice butter…” One man she references, old Marshal Turgot, who knew almost too much about famines, was able in fatter days to eat a hundred oysters before breakfast just to whet his appetite.
Now I don’t know how old “old” is but at current L.A. restaurant market prices, 300 fresh oysters would be about $1400 not including the butter. Ouch! Just eat a dozen, save a little more and buy this book instead.
My favorite recipe was the incredibly complex Oysters à la Bazeine whose last and simplifying instructions were
Or fry oysters and serve with ale
Fisher’s description of the scurrilous chef who related the recipe to her is quite funny in its comparison of his descriptions of the dishes he’d made versus how certain men talk about their female conquests.
Like so many foods once you get into them, oysters apparently vary widely in their tastes and nuances according to their terroir, or whatever the watery equivalent of terroir is. If you like them, and explore them, she tells us we will find that
…Then, it will taste like a Chincoteague or a blue point or a mild oyster from the Louisiana bayous or perhaps a metallic tiny Olympia from the Western coast. Or it may have a clear harsh flavor, straight from a stall in a wintry French town, a stall piled herringbone style with Portugaises and Garennes, green as death to the uninitiated and twice as toothsome. Or it may taste firm and yet fat, like the English oysters from around Plymouth.
I’m hoping for Chesapeakes, Rappahanocks, or Chincoteagues when I finally get that oyster stew at Bertha’s.
While I don’t recommend actually eating oysters anywhere near this book, Mark Sarigianis has thoughtfully and appropriated included an oyster knife tied to the spine of the box enclosing the box. Ostensibly, this is for helping to open the box but I didn’t find it necessary for that, so he must really mean for you to shuck some oysters. And knowing his waterman background, I’m sure he means just that. But either way it’s a nice design touch and works in lieu of a spine label to identify the book on your shelf.
The binding is a quarter-bound elegant white goat leather foil-stamped with a color reminiscent of the pearlescence of the inside of an oyster shell. And the sea-foam green St-Armand paper has a texture that visually reminds me of the oft-renewed paint on the old wooden skipjacks that used to ply their trade on the Chesapeake Bay. Maybe I’m “reaching” there.
The beautiful end-papers are by Martin Mazorra, whose whimsical illustrations throughout the book are a perfect foil for Fisher’s texts. Knowing her only through this book, I expect she would be highly pleased with the illustrations. The illustrations are printed in the same blue ink as the handset headline typeface used for the chapter headers, recipe titles, and page numbers, which sets them off nicely against the paper and the black ink of the text.
As always, paper is a huge part of my book reading experience, and the custom Saint Armand paper used here is delightful to the touch, takes the bite of the type nicely, has a beautiful deckle edge, and has a nice visual texture that seems to vary in different lights. The mill’s papers were also used on the boards for the binding and on the clam-shell box.
This is yet another quality production from the Press and one I’m sorry to send back after completing my review. With a bigger private press book wish list and “mental library” than budget, I’m always wondering if I’m letting one slip away that I should have acquired or just plain never heard of a book I would have acquired if I had know about it. In the same way that Fisher talks about the oysters her mother talked about from her nostalgic schoolday “midnight feasts”:
And yet…yet those will always be, in my mental gastronomy, on my spiritual taste-buds, the most delicious oysters I never ate.
Alas for those out of budget books I’ll never own. But at least I got a “taste” of this one.
AVAILABILITY: Consider the Oyster is printed in an edition of 52 copies. As of the writing of this review, copies are still available directly from the Press website. If you are really hungry pick up a Ham on Rye to go with your oysters.
NOTE: The Whole Book Experience wishes to acknowledge the kindness and support of Mark Sarigianis in loaning me a review copy so that I can share this edition with others. I hope that this review might result in some sales for the Press and also provides some vicarious pleasure to those of us that might never own a copy.
My father made oyster stew on New Year’s Day during my childhood. Later it became too expensive to make and the tradition ended. It was a very simple recipe–a stick of butter, 2 cans of frozen Pacific oyster with the “liquor” from the jars, a quart of half and half, and lots of black pepper. It remains in my memory as the best oyster stew I’ve eaten (none in the restaurants I’ve had since then compare).
If you are ever in the town of Steveston in British Columbia, on the Fraser River, you will find several places that serve delicious oysters on the half shell, and one place whose name I can’t remember that had the best fried oysters and chips. Though flying is torture for me these days, if I had the frequent flyer miles I’d go back to Vancouver and drive to Steveston just for those fried oysters.
That recipe sound just like the ones Fisher liked best! Thanks for the oyster tips in the Northwest. My family all lives in the Seattle area, so maybe I’ll cart my parents up to Vancouver one of these days and visit Stevenson. My mom loves fried oysters! Hope you are doing well, my friend! We’re long over due for a bookish chat over tea.