Oysters on the Half Shell

Ingredients 6 oysters on the half shell 2 lemon wedges a dash of horseradish 1/8 c. cocktail sauce

Directions: 1. Chill oysters. 2. Open and leave juice in deposit shell. Serve on cracked ice. 3. Add lemon juice and dip in cocktail sauce with a cautious bit of horseradish and enjoy.

Oysters on the Half Shell

by Lael Morgan

Not surprisingly, the menus for George and Martha Washington’s famous three course dinners involved a lot of oysters.  They lived near the Virginia coast which many early settlers counted on for its bounty.  Oyster loaves—the critters creamed and baked briefly in hollowed out bread shells sealed with egg whites with buttered exteriors—were popular.  So were scalloped oysters which were much like scalloped potatoes. However, the less squeamish preferred them raw.

You should also be warned that oysters are thought to be an aphrodisiac, Yet my parents, who met and married late in life and adored each other as well as oysters, bought them by the peck and probably not for sexual incentive.  (Still, it’s possible that oysters are part of my DNA).

Shortly after my birth, my family moved from the coast to central Maine, where seafood could not be trusted.  So I was introduced to raw oysters, not by my parents but by my college roommate’s father who apparently did not enjoy them to the fullest.

“Just bite them once and then swallow them,” he instructed. However, I decided to take a second bite and became addicted.

Live oysters are hard to open but there are good instructions on how to do it on line. And if you are emotionally torn about the experience of eating live seafood, ask yourself if it is humane to boil and eat spinach, which also has feelings although lacking in deep thinking capacity.

For your first raw oyster adventure, keep the extras simple.  Recipes for Mignonette Sauce for raw oysters contain so much ground pepper and garlic that I suspect the authors didn’t want to taste the main course, but to keep up with the elite by eating something that is labor intensive and expensive.  Start with the basic the recipe below and enjoy exploring beyond it.