Bloomsbury USA, 2007
Hardcover, 304 pages, $24.95.
Art on the half shell
MFK Fisher, in her delectable book Consider the Oyster, begins with, “An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life…” The poor thing beginning as a mere wisp in a vast sea, suffers sexual confusion as it reverts from a he to a she and a he once again, distributing eggs and sperm by the millions until finally maturing, plucked from its watery home, as a forthcoming delicacy, utterly adored and craved.
From Eleanor Clark, in The Oysters of Locmariaquer, we read about the celebrated Belons, succulent oysters originally from the river Belon in France. Scientists brought them to Boothbay Harbor in Maine in the 1950s where they escaped to other nooks and coves of the shore and are now among the rarest and most desired oysters in the world. Clark, too, tells us the oft-amazing consumption levels in centuries-ago France: Casanova ate fifty oysters every evening with his punch, “faced with the grid of perpetual romance,” and King Henry IV had the reputation of eating not dozens but hundreds as a sitting. Both men were known for their levels of sexual pursuit, thus contributing to the enlightenment of the supposed aphrodisiacal powers and charm of this particular mollusk. Jacobsen’s take on this? I will get back to that.
An oyster is not just an oyster, just as a fish is just not only a fish. There are at least two hundred unique oyster appellations in North America, each with a distinct flavor. Jacobsen takes us around the continent in playful passionate prose. Region by region he describes each oyster’s appearance, origin, flavor, availability, the various reasons to eat oysters (they are good for you, high in protein, low in cholesterol) ways to enjoy them, cooked or raw.
And now we know the meaning of “R” in referring when to eat oysters – only in the months with the letter R in their spelling, which means September through April. As waters and climates warm, the he/she oysters are preparing to spawn, the eggs and sperm drifting together, forming miniscule spats. The spats and older oysters will be growing in the warmer months, soon to be edible size.
This time of year is the time to go out and buy oysters to stuff the turkey, to make oyster stew or soup or fanciful dishes, or just the most elemental way, shucked and slurped, with or without a dash of a favorite sauce. Even as he describes the shapes of the different oysters, their cup, their brininess, their seductive shape on the half shell, salivation begins. One day in Maine, “on the frigid shore of the Damariscotta River, I pulled up a thick-shelled oyster, pried it open, dumped it in my mouth. The meat was cool, briny, brimming with life…a mile up the river inlet, a two-thousand year-old shell midden bore testament that humans had been connecting to the earth in just this spot, in just this way, for a long time.”
And so with Rowan Jacobsen, an ultimate inspired tour guide, we enter the world-wide-world of oysterdom and one human’s place in it, from scary brave introduction-greeting the slippery little creature alive in a sea of surprisingly saline self-sauce, lying supine in its exquisite half-shell, about to enliven in an utterly new way the taste buds of a neophyte, mollusk imbiber, to the rare and exotically inclined world of the passionate oyster aficionado. “While it is possible,” Jacobsen writes, “to know nothing about great oysters and still enjoy them, your experience will be greatly enhanced by background knowledge…Think of oysters as a minor work of art; knowing something about where it came from, how it came to be, and how it might be described will give meaning to your meal.”
Maine, in most people’s minds, is lobster country, “but the frigid ocean, terminal moraine, and unpolluted coastline that grows such happy crustaceans also make for beautiful bivalves.”
Putting words to nuances of tastes, giving names to the niches and coves that elicit the growth of spats clinging to levees, ledges, alee in the wild of ocean tumult, gives an ultimate sprightliness of briny surprise, the surprise a sensual burst of carnal charm, a devourment of pending renewal with each half-shell ready to assault one’s remembrances of previous oyster feasts, however small or large.
The Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock managed to starve in their first lean years with one of the most nutritious foods bobbing under their frail vessels. And yet the nutritional value of these mollusks was well known. In her final debilitating days, dying of syphilis in Africa (a gift from her husband), Karen Blixen (the writer Isak Dinesan) lived her last years on champagne and oysters, retaining, for her, she would say, her love of the exotic nature of food.
As for the aphrodisiacal arousing love portion hidden aspect inherent in oysters, Rowan Jacobsen suggests, “…take your chances…” The reward-surely-more certain for immediate satisfaction than the lottery.
Jacobsen ends with a listing of best oyster bars and oyster festivals, and a few recipes. Pilgrim or not, you no longer need starve for want of the most nutritional addition to your diet, With hammer and glove and/or any of the new specially designed oyster chuckers, oysters for breakfast, lunch, dinner and serious snacks can add new illumination to your life.