Of Bivalves And Men (Or Taking Maximum Leader Out To The Woodshed)

He was a bold man that first eat an oyster. --Jonathan Swift

On Saturday, The Cards and the Peperiums did a very odd thing : We went drinking. Now most of you would say there's absolutely nothing odd about the Cards and the Peperiums drinking but I assure you this day there was. The odd thing was it was about 2 degrees out and we hadn't really gone out for drinks as much as we had gone out for raw oysters. Who eats raw fish in 2 degree weather besides the Eskimos?

Dear readers, there is something you must never ever forget about me : In spite of my hereditary dingbat lineage, I don't miss much. My grandfather had a saying that were words to live by for a happy marriage and life; "Doris (his old battleaxe or my late grandmother) takes care of all the small problems in life, I take care of all the big problems. Thankfully, to date, there have been no big problems." Just to put my grandfather's wisdom in some perspective, the old family church he was to be married in burned to the ground 2 weeks before his nuptuals and the stock market crashed while he was on honeymoon. So, following on in my grandfather's wise footsteps, one must really step in it, to get my attention. And dear readers, one of you did really step in it, awhile back, over at Man About Mayfair:

The Maximum Leader said...

I am glad to see that you will not be ordering oysters at your club (although I'm sure that if your club offered oysters they would be fine). I find that in areas more than a 4 hours drive by car/truck from a major body of salty/brackish water is not the type of region in which one wants to order shellfish. I will go further and say that in areas more than 4 hours drive from a major body of water ordering fish may be suspect.

Many people, mistakenly, believe that this little personality foible of mine stems from a concern about the freshness of the product concerned. In fact, as Maximum Leader, I have a considerable understanding of how fish is caught, prepared and shipped. Indeed, my concern comes more from experience in how non-coastal places tend to prepare fish.

This said, I'm sure your club's poisson courses are delicious and well prepared.

Are you sure that you should make a special request for Mrs P and Card's Wife? Something like Dinde Grand-duc? (Can't find a link to the recipe - but you can find it in your handy copy of Larousse Gastronomique.)

Now, Maximum Leader, or Maxy, as he is known here, is quite the expert at most things, especially ham pillows, but Maxy, we need to talk. This advice of advoiding shellfish 4 hours from brackish water is not advice that leads to a happy life. Life must have risks or it isn't a life. Besides, men have understood the oyster and how to pack it for travel for centuries. Emma, which Jane Austen penned in 1816, takes place in the imaginary village of Highbury. Highbury is 16 miles from London and the families of Highbury, in the days before dentistry and antibiotics, regularly partook of oysters in season and not one of them cashed in their chips though the book lasted long enough for a couple to be married and then bring forth a child. A middle-aged couple no less, hence the regular partaking of oysters. Back in those days, in season was as key to enjoying oysters as was the proper packing of said bivalves.

The late cook, Julia Child, had grandparents who hailed from St. Louis. Julia was born in 1912. So, if one does the math, this would place Julia's grandparents in St. Louis prior to St. Louis becoming the dog food capital of America. Or, about 20 years before the turn of the 20th century. According to Julia, every winter her grandfather would order a barrel of oysters from a reputable purveyor of oysters in New York City. The reputable oyster purveyor would have his men pack the oysters in a barrel surrounded in seaweed with the well of the oyster shell facing downwards. This kept the oyster completely content inside the little seawater bath inside it's shell with enough little oceany things for it to dine on. The oysters, not having a brain, didn't even know they were no longer in the sea. The barrel was then placed on a steam locomotive, right side up, and transported to St. Louis where the oysters kept well for several weeks in the cold basement of Julia's grandfather's home. So the moral of this tale is that the key to enjoying oysters away from the sea is to see how they have been treated before you consume them : they must be placed well side down. Otherwise they will grow sick and eventually die. More than that, you will think you are dying if you consume a mistreated oyster. The good news is that a mistreated oyster gives off such a bad odor, one has to be beyond inebriated and really in a horizontal state to be enough of an idiot to consider consuming one. If someone tells you, they were once made sick from a bad oyster or even a clam or mussel, nod your head and listen patiently with concerned eyes to their lament. But realise that if they are not six feet under when they are telling you this fish tale, it was far more likely the mixing of too many fines wines, or cheap liquor and not the lowly bivalves that caused them to drive the porcelian bus all night. I did not spend my the summers of my youth in Maine at an alcohol-filled summer cottage with a constant stream of visitors to not learn that most simple and honest truth.

The oyster shack the Cards and Peperiums isn't an oyster shack in it's true form : It is an American restaurant chain that has a brisk trade with the Centrum Silver crowd with commitment issues and are coked up on Viagra. However, since we reside in times of trigger happy lawyers, this restaurant chain understands the oyster very well and makes a very decent trade off of the bivalve. They even have an oyster room, which the first time we went there, they allowed me to take a look at. Inside the spacious, cold and clean room, hundreds of oysters of many different varieties were laid out properly on trays with the well facing down. I only wish this restaurant chain would take their selection in music as seriously as they take the oyster. As well as the volume in which they choose to play it at. Does Viagra make you hard of hearing? The only decent music played at a reasonable level is the Blue-note jazz in the men's room. The manager absolutely refuses to let the Card's wife and I go in there, despite the fiver the Card always slips him to set up a table for the 4 of us in there. As a result it is almost impossible to carry on a conversation on the cellphone with your lawyer in our oyster shack. It doesn't help that your lawyer is speaking in low tones because he's hiding in the closet under the stairs at his private club, while enjoying a smoke and a drink. He's forced to do this because his club banns use of the cellphone and tobacco products in public areas. But we've managed to work around this flaw by arriving at the restaurant around 4pm. At 4pm the music is a tad lower and the Viagraers have yet to make their appearance.

Anyway, the natives who have the day off from school (the children) are getting restless here at the Peperium household so I must wrap up my thoughts and continue taking Maxy out to the woodshed for his the shellfish 4 hours away from brackish water comment another day. I will say that the reason the Card's wife and I did not dine on oysters with the Wing Commander in St. Louis was not out of any fear of being served mistreated oysters. It is because we are not ladies of all talk and no action. We are ladies of both talk and action but with our husbands only. Therefore, it is highly improper for married women of our temperments to dine on oysters unaccompanied by our husbands.

But before I sign off I must acknowledge that Old Dominion once asked for an oyster pan roast recipe that he mistakenly thought I spoke of in this space. It not me but was Mandingo, who seems to have a very canny understanding of the oyster, who spoke of preparing an oyster pan roast. I have never prepared one as I enjoy my oysters as M. F. K. Fisher once wrote:

cold, straightforward, simple, capable of spirit but unadorned, like a Low Church service maybe or a Boston romance.

However, I will be be pleased as punch to rustle up a recipe for you Old Dominion, if Mandingo does not. But look no further than M. F. K. for all of your oyster needs. She wrote a wonderful book, Consider The Oyster, which is included in the compendium printed at the time of her death, The Art Of Eating. The Art of Eating is a very good book with very good recipes, including an oyster roast. Just don't follow M. F. K's advice on life. She was a high sensualist and as a result, messed hers up quite a bit. However, after reading Consider The Oyster the most stubborn oyster refusers will reconsider the oyster. And if they also dump their use of birth control plus join the Catholic Church, they will soon find they are leading a much happier life. This following description of M.F.K's mother's oyster feasts while away at school demonstrates what a wonderful writer M.F.K. was as well as why everyone ought to conside the oyster :

I shall remember always the mysterious beautiful sensation of well-being I felt, when I was small, to hear my mother, to hear my mother talk of suppers she used to eat at boarding school. They were called "midnight feasts," and were kept secret, supposedly, from the teachers, in the best traditions of the 1890's. They consisted of an oyster loaf. There may have been other things. Maybe the most daring young ladies even drank ginger beer, although I'm afraid it was more likely a swett raspberry shrub or some such unfortunate potation. Maybe there were cigarettes, and pickles, and bonbons. But it is the oyster loaf that I remember.

I know I shall never taste one like it, except in my dreams, nor will my mother...if she ever did so. But I can see it, and smell it, and I even know which parts to bite and which to let melt against the roof of your mouth, exquisitely hot and comforting, although my mother never told me.

It was made in a bread loaf from the best baker in the village, and the loaf was hollowed out and filled with rich cooked oysters, and then, according to my mother's vague and yet vivid account, the top was fastened on again, and the whole was baked crisp and brown in the oven. Then it was wrapped tightly in a fine white napkin, and hidden in a chambermaid's cape while she ran from the baker's to the seminary and up the back stairs to the appointed bedroom.

The girls, six or seven of them because an oyster loaf was really very large, sat in their best flowered wrappers on the floor, while one of them kept watch at the keyhole and saw that no light flickered from her candle or the shaded lamp.

The maid slipped into the whispering, giggling huddle, and put down her warm bundle, and although she had been well paid was always willing to take a pocketful of the rich cookies the young ladies' mothers sent them every week from home. Then she left, and the oyster loaf was unwrapped...

That brief description also demonstrates to everyone what a high sensualist M.F.K. was because, thanks to Irish Elk and Thomas Edison, we all know what boarding schools to quote M.F.K., in the best traditions of the 1890's, were really like.

Flowered wrappers my oyster...

Mrs. P

Comments

[Old Dominion Tory]

Some people on Cape Cod drive to Wellfleet in the winter, gather Billingsgate oysters in a bucket, and then eat them on the beach, accompanied by chilled champagne.

[The Maximum Leader]

But my dear Mrs. P. It is not the freshness or quality of the shellfish I was concerned about, it was the preparation. I should have realized that raw was the preferred preparation.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Hmmn....