a slice of heav­en on an oys­ter shell

But first, before I tell you about my after­noon in heav­en, I must give cred­it to the own­er of my pho­to­graph of sushi, in my pre­vi­ous post. At first I did­n’t feel the need to cred­it her because her copy­right water­mark, “La Petite Chi­noise,” is on the pho­to. I just found it by googling images of sushi, not hav­ing one of my own! But then I found myself read­ing her blog, and it’s real­ly quite inter­est­ing. She lives in Paris, but hap­pened to be vis­it­ing Lon­don, where she found not only Nobu Lon­don, but also “Books for Cooks” in Not­ting Hill, two of my favorite places in the world. So vis­it her blog, do.

Also, I must say that I am work­ing on how to make the hotlinks to oth­er posts in my own blog go right to the sec­tion that talks about the thing I’m refer­ring to, not just to the whole post. I can see that it might be quite irri­tat­ing to click on “Books for Cooks” and get sent to a post that is about a lot of oth­er things before it gets to the men­tion of the book­store. I’m on it! There must be a way. In the mean­time, I hope you enjoy mean­der­ing through the var­i­ous point­less things I have to say before I get to the point­less thing you thought you want­ed to read. It’s all such a challenge.

Speak­ing of chal­lenges, I drummed up my courage this morn­ing and… drove! To the sta­ble to drop Avery off for her day of muck­ing out and such, and then to the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket. I real­ly got myself scared of dri­ving, since my hor­rif­ic acci­dent when I lived here last (don’t wor­ry, nobody got hurt except the car). But not dri­ving is one of those things that lim­its me, makes me even more timid than I nor­mal­ly am, which is say­ing some­thing. I don’t like the idea that as life goes on, I do few­er things. I want to do more things! So John had encour­aged me to dri­ve, and I had demurred. But that’s ridicu­lous. You can’t just shrink into a per­son who either walks or lets some­one else dri­ve her around, whether it’s in a bus or a tube or a cab. So I took key in hand, reas­sured a dubi­ous Avery that all would be well (“not only ‘can’ you dri­ve, Mom­my, but ‘should’ you dri­ve?”), and got in the car. I should have known Emmy would not let me down. All was well! And as my reward I got to shop to my heart’s con­tent, know­ing that there was a nice car seat wait­ing for the ridicu­lous­ly heavy bag when I was fin­ished. And a handy car park dou­bles as the mar­ket any­way, so I just parked her and was off.

I sam­pled so many things that it was sil­ly to think I had to have lunch as well. Let’s see, I had fresh pesto with a lit­tle bread stick, and a slice of Red William pear, and a bit of goat’s cheese on a lit­tle bis­cuit, and some apple juice! Then, how­ev­er, I hap­pened upon the fish­mon­ger, one Mal­don Oys­ter & Seafood Com­pa­ny , locat­ed at Birch­wood Farm, Cock Clarks, Chelms­ford, Essex. Their con­cern at the mar­ket con­sists of a sort of ele­vat­ed truck whose side opens out, with three won­der­ful blokes behind the full-to-over­flow­ing iced counter. One fel­low helped me, and I was about ready to mar­ry him by the time I was fin­ished. “My lit­tle girl likes lemon sole, and Dover sole,” I said. “But I’d like to have mon­ey left over after din­ner to send her to uni­ver­si­ty, as well, so what would you rec­om­mend?” He put his griz­zled head to one side, con­sid­ered me, looked over his wares and said, “Time was when peo­ple asked spe­cial for whit­ing for the kid­dies,” he said. He pulled a fil­let from its bed of ice and laid it before me rev­er­en­tial­ly. “Take a look at that, my love. That’s a del­i­cate fish, that is. I’ve nev­er seen one that size, off the West Coun­try, that is.” So I suc­cumbed. He wrapped it up, shout­ing to one of his mates, “Don’t for­get the brill, now, every­thing’s for sale except the staff,” and to anoth­er cus­tomer, “I’ll tell you the ‘erring’s love­ly today, just love­ly. Would you like it with the ‘ard roe, or the soft roe?” To me he said, “This whit­ing, now, to get it any fresh­er you’d have to get a sight wet. What else can I get for you, my love?” So I said as how I’d have a nice dressed crab, which is such a lux­u­ry con­sid­er­ing the hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ence I had once try­ing to get any usable quan­ti­ty of crab from its shell. He sift­ed through the piles and came up with the best.

But then came the piece de resis­tance. I had noticed a Frenchy-look­ing girl queue­ing up at the side of the truck, wait­ing in front of a low table to the edge of which was a chalk­board pro­claim­ing “1 pound per shucked oys­ter”. Now, I was intro­duced to raw oys­ters late in life, and have nev­er been a huge devo­tee although I like them, and I will eat them if I trust the source. Also I adore oys­ter stew, for which I will give you a per­fect recipe near­er to Christ­mas time. But one sum­mer I found myself in, of all places, Water­loo, Iowa with my par­ents-in-law and they took me to a seafood fes­ti­val at their beloved coun­try club, Sun­ny­side. I know what you’re think­ing: a seafood fes­ti­val in a state that embod­ies “land-locked”? I thought the same thing. But I was a guest, and they were going, and I will do almost any­thing for my par­ents-in-law. I was seat­ed next to one of my favorite peo­ple in the world, their friend Hugh, whose wife Janey gave me my first cook­ing les­son, lo these (eek) 23 years ago. Gosh, that’s scary. She’s a true French chef and I was in love right away, with her, her adorable and racy hus­band, with Iowa and life in gen­er­al. So Hugh poked me in the ribs and said, “Gonna have some oys­ters, Kris­ten?” “You know, Hugh, they’re not my favorite thing. Plus you know what they say about oys­ters…” I said. “Oh, now, come on,” Hugh teased me mer­ci­less­ly. “You can’t say you’re writ­ing a cook­book, you can’t say you even care about food, if you don’t like oys­ters on the half shell. And these will be the best you’ve ever had. The fresh­est, any­way.” I closed my lips upon my skep­ti­cism on this point, and decid­ed to take the bait, so to speak. Well, it was a rev­e­la­tion. As a fish chef once told me at the great Mitchel­l’s Fish Mar­ket in Indi­anapo­lis once told me, “We have to break the mold on fresh­ness because the fish comes from so far away. You coastal peo­ple can get lazy, think­ing it’s right there.” And obvi­ous­ly it held true for Water­loo, Iowa, that glo­ri­ous July night. Thank you, Hugh.

So today I was in such a good mood, and such a food mood, that I thought I’d have one. The beefy guy in his wet and bloody apron laid the oys­ter from the Black­wa­ter Riv­er in Essex on a well-worn wood­en block with an oys­ter-shell-shaped inden­ta­tion in the cen­ter, and advanced on it with a prop­er oys­ter knife, split it open, slid his knife around under the oys­ter, and placed it on a lit­tle plate piled with crushed ice. “There you are, now,” he said as he ten­dered it. There was a lit­tle plate of lemon wedges, a dish of salt, a dish of chopped shal­lots in red wine vine­gar and a bot­tle of Tabas­co. I squeezed on some lemon juice, added a drip of vine­gar and slurped it down. Ahhh! Icy, icy cold, fresh, briny, just sub­lime­ly fresh and per­fect. “I’m going to have to have anoth­er of those, if you please,” I said, hand­ing over anoth­er pound coin. “Oh, make it two more.” He looked on, smil­ing slight­ly with plea­sure at my plea­sure. So guess where I’m going for my Christ­mas stew oys­ters? Some­thing to look for­ward to.

I came home with my laden L.L. Bean can­vas bag (I’m try­ing valiant­ly to stop the inva­sion of plas­tic car­ri­er bags in my home), and a slight case of indi­ges­tion at so many dif­fer­ent foods! I thought of the won­der­ful poem by Egon Ron­ay, the Hun­gar­i­an restau­rant crit­ic whose food guides have been bibles in my two Lon­don homes. It starts out like this…

A Food Inspec­tor’s Lament

Spare a thought for the bloke in the corner
With the news­pa­per, note­book and pen
He put away four cours­es at lunchtime
And this evening he’s at it again

Before the black pud­ding (with scallops)
Came veloute of but­ter­nut squash
‘Com­pli­ments of the kitchen,’ how charming
(And veloute make soup awful­ly posh!)

And after­wards, sea bass ‘n’ pesto
Risot­to and Shaved Parme­san too
With buck­ets of oil and balsamic,
What hap­pened to old-fash­ioned stew?

…

So spare a thought for the bloke in the corner
With the heart attack lying in wait,
And if he seems a bit down in the mouth, well,
He’s got rather a lot on his plate.

Now, to get the 12 stan­zas in between, you’ll either have to buy the food guide, or… come to my house and bor­row it.