BeauSoleil

Named after some guy related to Beyoncé.

The BeauSoleil oyster was for me -- and many others -- an introduction to raw oysters. Their clean, delicate, moderately-salty flavor make them a very approachable oyster for those taking their first trepidatious slurps. Grown by Maison BeauSoleil in Miramichi Bay, New Brunswick, where the waters are very cold and clean. Typical for the region (atypical everywhere else), the growers collect wild spat (baby oysters) from their local waters using devices known as Chinese Hats, then raise them in floating bags just under the surface of the water where it is warm enough for the oysters to grow and feed normally. Because the water is so cold this far north, ice can be a major problem, and freezing oysters kills them very efficiently. To avoid this travesty, they submerge the bags deep under the ice during the winter to protect them.

Like many plants and animals, in very cold environments oysters grow more slowly, which can result in a more compact, sturdy shell and firmer meats than is common in warmer climes. BeauSoleils are harvested at 3-5 years old between 2.5-3" and hand-packed into wooden crates cup-down to extend their shelf life. They also sell a larger size, marketed as French Kiss oysters, which are harvested at 5+ years old and are 3-4" in length (they're great if you can get them, super meaty).

What? You want to know about the connection to Beyoncé? Alright, here's the story:

BeauSoleil oysters are named after Joseph Broussard (nicknamed BeauSoleil, "Beautiful Sun" in French), a leader in the Acadian Resistance of the mid-1700s. In a nutshell, the British were trying to settle in New Brunswick and -- in typical British fashion -- attempted to expel those already in the area by force. Broussard and his militia troops captured 17 British supply ships in the summer of 1759, hampering the expulsion and earning him a place in local history. Later on, he moved a group of Acadians and his family (wife and 11 children) to what is now southern Louisiana. From his progeny, a star was born, albeit a couple hundred years later. I'm sure he had plenty of descendants who accomplished great things, but, really, who can compete with Beyoncé?

I wonder if she likes oysters...

Glidden Flat

 One of the most expensive oysters on the US market. 

Also generally referred to as Belons -- incorrectly so: according to AOC regulations only oysters from the Belon River in Brittany may be called Belons -- the European Flat (Ostrea edulis, if you prefer the scientific name) was introduced to Maine waters in the 1940s, where there is now a successful wild population. This is a boon for oyster lovers in North America, as these oysters have a particularly weak adductor muscle, meaning they can't keep their shells closed tightly for long periods at a time, so they have a very short shelf life and cannot be shipped very far. In other words, it's very unlikely that you will see any French Belons on this continent. Also, to be fair, the vast majority of true Belons are ingested by the French, so there is no reason for them to leave the country.

O. edulis is not your typical oyster. For one, they grow almost perfectly round, as opposed to the gentle teardrop of Crassostrea virginica (the Eastern Oyster) or the frilly edges of Crassostrea gigas (the Pacific Oyster). They look more like a partially-flattened scallop than an oyster, as does the meat inside. Secondly, they smell and taste... well... assertive is the adjective I like to use when describing them. I've found I have to give my knife a good rinse in between shucking these and virginicas to keep from carrying over some of the flavor. It is often said that oysters (particularly the eastern oysters) should smell and taste like clean sea, these tend to bring the vision of a seashore at low tide in August to mind. A good comparison would be that of sweetened fish sauce (the good stuff): pungently sea and a bit of fishiness, tempered by a healthy salinity and mild sweetness. Addictive to some, unpalatable to many, this is an oyster I always hesitate to recommend to a stranger. I've been known to sit down to 30 oysters by myself, yet I can only get down a couple of this species.

It might seem like I'm down on these oysters, but that is far from the truth. I like the idea of them. The simple fact that they exist and people like them makes me happy. I could go into the technical differences in the species, but I fear this post will become too long and boring.

We buy our edulis from Barb Scully of Glidden Point Oyster Sea Farm, who uses the name Glidden Flat. The oysters come with their shells held firmly shut by rubber bands (remember the weak adductors?), and are fairly consistent in size, shape, and quality. Though a few might disagree, I consider these to be best opened by experienced shuckers; the shells can be razor sharp, and the method of opening is different, and takes a measure of finesse. So wear gloves or use a heavy towel, or both, when shucking these oysters.

All in all, if you consider yourself the adventurous type and you come across Belons or other examples of O. edulis please try them. If only to know what they're like. I promise you'll never have another oyster that can compare.

R is for Oyster

(I'm coming back! And what better way to ease back into writing than by posting a short essay by M. F. K. Fisher? Enjoy.)


R is for Oyster
By M.F.K. Fisher, from Consider the Oyster (C)1941


C. Pearl Swallow
He died of a bad oyster.




That is carved on a tombstone in a graveyard in Maine -- Paris Hill, I think the place is called. The man's name was good for such an end, but probably the end was not.

If Mr. Swallow really died of a bad oyster he was a most miserable man for some hours, certainly. The bad oyster itself was rotten to his taste, so that he knew as soon as he had eaten it that he was wrong. Perhaps he worried a little about it, and then forgot and ate other things to rub the coppery taste from his tongue. He may, even in Maine, have washed it down with a drink.

In two or five or six hours, though, he remembered. He felt faint, and cold fingers whuddered over his skin, so that he reeled and shivered. Then he was sick, violently and often. He could barely lift his head, for the weakness and the dreadful cramps in his belly. His bowled surged, so that he felt they would drain his very heart out of him. And, God, he was thirsty, thirsty. . . . I'm dying, he thought, and even in his woe he regretted it, and did not believe it. But he died.

Perhaps he died of a bad oyster. Oysters can be bad, all right, if they are stale and full of bacteria that make for putrefaction. Mushrooms can be deadly, too. But mushrooms and oysters are alike in that they take the blame, because of superstition and something innately mysterious about their way of life, for countless pains that never are their fault.

It is true that people have died from eating mushrooms, because there are at least two deadly ones and innocently or not, men have been fed them. It is true, too, that some men have eaten rotten oysters and died, hideously, racked with vomiting.

But quite often, I feel sure, mushrooms and oysters too are blamed for sickness that could equally be caused by many things like piggishness or nerves or even other poisons.

What man knowingly would eat a bad oyster, anyway? A bad oyster looks old and disagreeable in its shell, and it smells somewhat of copper and somewhat of rotten eggs. Of course, it might be hidden in a pie or a patty or under a coating of rich spiced sauce in a restaurant. But even so, a man's tongue would warn him that something was very wrong, I think, unless he was half under the table he sat at.

(In this, the oyster is kinder than the mushroom, which can taste most delicious when it is most deadly. And that is seldom, I insist.)

And in case a man's tongue warns him that he has a last swallowed that gastronomical rarity, a bad 'un, he should leave the board at once and do what men have always know how to do, even the dainty ones, and get rid of it.

There should 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.

Probably more people eat oysters now than ever before, because it is easier to ship them from their beds and bottoms to the dining tables of this nation and any other nation whose people still have time for such things.

The old-fashioned habit of sniffing each oyster more or less delicately before swallowing it is as nearly extinct as its contemporary trick of gulping, with an all but visible holding of the nose which was considered genteel . . . and so much safer.

Restaurants, even air-cooled perforce in the midst of hot sand, like Palm Springs, or as far from the sea as Oskaloosa in Iowa, can serve oysters without fear these days. Tycoons with inlets in Maryland have their highfalutin mollusks frown for supper that night to a penthouse in Fort Worth, or to a simple log-cabin Away from It All in the Michigan woods, and know that Space and Time and even the development of putrescent bacteria stand still for dollars. Bindlestiffs on a rare bender in Los Angeles (Ell-ay, you say) gulp down three swollen "on the half's" with rot gut whiskey chaser in any of a dozen joints on Main Street, and are more than moderately sure that if they die that night, it won't be from the oysters.

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.

Several decades ago, a jolly man wrote:

"Let's sing a song of glory to Themistocles O'Shea
Who ate a dozen oysters on the second
Day of May . . ."

And even the government tells us R's are silly. "A clean fat oyster may be eaten with impunity at any time of the year," the officials say in folder after folder.

Doctors tell us so. "Hell, if it smells good, it's okay," they say, with modifications dictated by their practices and their positions in the Association.

Men who write pamphlets call Hypochlorite process of oyster purification, report on experimental purification of polluted oysters, on commercial scale, by floating them in sea water treated with hyperchloride of calcium. (Public Health Reprint 652.) . . 5 . . T27 . 6/a:652 say so, as do earnest Japanese who deliver papers before the Kokusai Yorei Kabushiki Kaisha called Kaki no banasi, which means Talk on Oysters, with surprisingly un-Oriental bluntness.

They all say that oysters are all right any time as long as they are healthy . . . all, that is, except the oyster-farmers.

The farmers' actions are understandable, after all. Their main interest is in growing as many good crops as they can, and it stands to reason that if a healthy female, round with some twenty million eggs, is takes from the water before she has a chance to birth them, the farmers lose.

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 remarkable 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!

People who have broken the rule and been able to buy oysters in the forbidden months say that they are most delicious then, full and flavorsome. They should be served colder than in winter, and eaten at the far end of a stifling day, in an almost empty chophouse, with a thin cold Alsatian wine to float them down . . . and with them disappear the taste of carbon dioxide and sweaty clerks from the streets outside, so that even in July in a big city seems for a time to be a most beautiful month, and C. Pearl Swallow's ghost well-laid.

It's temporary, I promise.

I've had some pressing issues I need to take care of, so this blog has fallen low on my list of priorities for the time being. HOWEVER, it will be back. And probably more frequently updated as I had originally promised.

Seriously, just give me some time.



Thanks for waiting...

Widow's Hole Oysters

A classy-looking Widow's Hole. 

In my dealings with oyster farmers, I find it interesting just how many of them have come to oyster farming after doing something else. For some, that "something else" involves a life in/around the sea (fishing, lobstering, etc.), but some come from careers very different (one of the farmers at Island Creek was previously a metallurgist for GE). This was the case for Mike Osinski, founder of Widow's Hole Oysters. Once a successful software engineer, he retired to his house in Greenport, NY, and started learning about the rich history of oystering in the area. And as soon as he realized that he owned 500 feet from the shore of his property, it was all over: he was going to farm oysters. So much for retirement.

As it turns out, Mike's location on Peconic Bay is an ideal location for oysters. Greenport Harbor lies on the North Fork of Long Island, separated from Shelter Island by a narrow stretch of the Peconic Bay. This narrowness is key to the success of the Widow's Hole oysters, as it forces all of the tidal waters entering and leaving the main bay to flush through two straits, one on either side of the island, bringing all the nutrients, plankton, and algae back and forth past the area where the oysters are grown. In essence, this tidal flushing of nutrients gives the oysters access to more food than they could possibly consume, allowing them to grow fat and fast. Mike grows all his oysters off-bottom in bags and cages, and keeps the rapid growth in check by handling the oysters often -- this is actually more necessary than it sounds, as rapid growth means that the oysters need to be sized and redistributed regularly. This also allows him to keep predation to a minimum, a major problem for any oysters grown within reach of the sea floor. Whelks, oyster drills, and crabs all can wreak havoc on oysters grown this way if they are not constantly monitored.

Since 2004, Mike has been personally delivering his oysters to restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn every tuesday, selling 4,000-5,000 oyster per week from September through May. "The only oyster delivered to NYC same-day fresh," is one of his favorite refrains, and a true one: he only removes from the water what he will sell that week, and keeps them in the water until the morning of delivery. The man is quite a character to boot; he knows a lot of the local history of Greenport, especially related to oysters, and loves to talk to people about what he does. If you ever get the chance to talk to him, please do, you won't regret it.

Oh, and the oysters are really good. Relatively large shells hide a full, plump oyster with a medium brine and a hint of iron on the finish. You can find these on many oyster lists across the city, but rarely beyond, so slurp a few if you find them.

Chatham Oysters

A Chatham Oyster, they taste better than they look if you can believe that.

At the "elbow" of Cape Cod lies Chatham, a small town bordered on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean, which has always been entwined with the local community and economy. Once a center for whaling and commercial fishing fleets, it is now more synonymous with summer resorts and vacation homes and is a convenient port for those sailing to Nantucket Island. However, some people here still make a living from the sea, and Stephen Wright of Chatham Shellfish Company is one such person. 

Chatham Shellfish Company has been cultivating oysters in the Oyster Pond and Oyster River system for over 30 years, and for that last decade it has been run by Stephen Wright. Given his history in aquaculture, Stephen is the perfect person to run an oyster company and, in my opinion, has been coming to market with an exceptional product. The oysters here are grown from purchased seed and given a jump start in a FLUPSY system built into the docks before being moved to a floating nursery in Oyster Pond. This nursery consists of rows of floating mesh bags (seen in the photo below) which are flipped over frequently to kill off anything growing on them -- it is important to keep the equipment clean so that the water flow to the baby oysters doesn't become clogged and suffocate them. To sort the oysters by size, Stephen uses a mechanical sorter made up of a series of screens of decreasing size attached to a metal frame, which is shaken by a large motor. It's quite a system, and I was sad I didn't get to see it in action.  From here, they are grown in a variety of ways: traditional rack-and-bag method is used the most, but some oysters are placed in plastic trays laying on the bottom and the slow growers are moved directly onto specific areas of the pond floor to mature at their own pace.

Few things in the world are better than an oyster eaten on the spot where they are grown, still frigid and wet from the cold estuarine waters, and these did not disappoint. Already firm and fat in October, they delivered a cold smack of pure salt, followed by the sweetness of the adductor muscle and a clean, slightly mineral finish. Harvested to order, these are a solid choice for any raw bar, and will always remind me of that early morning I spent freezing my ass off on a boat in Chatham. 

Part of the Chatham lease at sunrise. 

Barnstable Oyster

A typical oyster from Barnstable Seafarms

Another great oyster from Barnstable Bay, grown very close to Beach Points and others, this one simply goes by the name Barnstable. Despite this closeness in geography to other oyster farms, the finished product is still unique -- a testament to just how the minute differences between methods can come through in flavor. 

Barnstable Seafarms is owned and operated by Les Hemmila, who employs only a few locals to help out with the operation. A Barnstable native, Les moved away at 15 to Summerland, California, then further afield to Indonesia where he helped to teach locals to build boats and create a viable fishing industry. A lifelong surfer, he ran charters on the islands for other surfers in his spare time (he still surfs to this day). Eventually, he moved back to Cape Cod, and settled back in his hometown, where he started growing oysters. He currently has leases in three separate areas, two in Barnstable Bay, and one in Osterville on the Atlantic side of the Cape where he over-winters his oysters. Icebergs and freezing temperatures in Barnstable Bay are very dangerous for oysters, so every fall he moves them to the warmer waters in Osterville, then back north in the spring after the ice has cleared. The warmer waters keep the oysters alive through the winter, but can prompt spawning in the summer months, so this is an area where very little actual production happens.

Like most oyster farmers, Les purchases his seed oysters from several hatcheries (sort of a "don't put all your eggs in one basket" mentality that seems to pay off). He takes this seed and places it in mesh bags raised off the bottom on rebar racks until it reaches about two inches in length, then these oysters are moved to wire trays laid on the sandy bottom or planted directly in the sand. One of the leases is more for show than production as it is easily accessed at low tide close to the shore, though more theft happens here because of the accessibility. However, this is typically the extent of predation in this area, a fact not lost on the farmers here. (Moon snails exist here, but are typically more of a problem for clams than oysters raised off the sea floor)

Deeply cupped at three inches long, with bright salinity and a nice sweetness, these oysters are spectacular on the half shell. Ideally, if you can find a raw bar with several Barnstable Bay varieties, try them next to each other and taste the differences for yourself.