Food

The food in 2001: A Space Odyssey is what I’m looking for.  Four nourishing mushes you eat with a monofork. 

Oysters Grilled And Raw

Saw Anthony Bourdain enjoying some grilled oysters in Baja California on “No Reservations,” so I fired some up for Fourth of July.

How To Grill Oysters:

Get the grill really flaming hot (I used mesquite charcoal and mesquite chips)

Put the oysters down, shell on.

(don’t be confused by that top image: the oysters should be in the shell, and the shell should be closed.  If the shell’s open, chuck ’em)

In 3-4 minutes they’ll pop open.

Take ’em off (with a glove or towel because they’re hot!).

Pop ’em open with a flathead screwdriver.

For sauce, I used this recipe from Food52 (ht Wrenshall).

Let’s learn more about oysters.

The type I grilled were Pacific oysters.  Maybe the most widely grown bivalve in the world.

Crassostrea gigas was named by a Swedish naturalist, Carl Peter Thunberg in 1795. It originated from Japan, where it has been cultured for hundreds of years. It is now the most widely farmed and commercially important oyster in the world, as it is very easy to grow, environmentally tolerant and is easily spread from one area to another. The most significant introductions were to the Pacific Coast of the United States in the 1920s and to France in 1966. In most places, the Pacific oyster was introduced to replace the native oyster stocks which were seriously dwindling due to overfishing or disease. In addition, this species was introduced to create an industry that was previously not available at all in that area. As well as intentional introductions, the Pacific oyster has spread through accidental introductions either through larvae in ballast water or on the hulls of ships. In some places in the world, though, it is considered by some to be an invasive species, where it is outcompeting native species, such as the Olympia oyster in Puget Sound, Washington, the rock oyster, Saccostrea commercialis in the North Island of New Zealand and the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis, in the Wadden Sea.

Specifically we had Pacific Gold and Carlsbad.  Carlsbad are farmed in Carlsbad, CA:

Here’s Thomas Grimm, co-founder of Golden Shore, which owns Carlsbad Aquafarm:

What’s the history of oysters in California?  Well everyone knows Jack London was an oyster pirate.

But beyond that? My research ends with the mysterious Mose Wicks.

I wanted to learn more about different types of oysters, with maps.  I found this great guide on WaitersToday.com.

Since the mid-1800’s most oysters have been cultured or farmed.Clad in rubber boods and rain gear,oyster growers spend hours on blustery beaches nursing their crop.

Along with current efforts to globalize oyster stocks,the growers we use have helped to foster the interest in boutique oysters – gourmet strains,with names reflecting their bays of origin.

In the old days it was simply “Hood Canal Oysters”.Now we’ll have Hamma,Sunset Beach,Pleasent Cove,Annas Bay,Little Creek,and Dabob Bay just to name a few.All of which are Hood Canal.

Many of these oysters come from small scale farms,which like regional vineyards have proliferated in the past 20 years.

What a helpful site!  I look forward to reading more on WaitersToday.

(If you go down to Australia though?  to eat the oysters there?  you enter a whole new world.

Someday.)

Readers seriously interested in oysters will enjoy Mark Kurlansky’s great book on the subject.

Kurlansky tells us:

Diarist Samuel Pepys often mentioned eating, giving, or receiving oysters for breakfasts, lunches, and inners – in all he mentions oysters fifty times in his diaries.  Dr. Johnson fed oysters to his cat, Hodge, buying them personally because he feared that if he sent servants, they would end up resenting the cat.

And:

William K. Brooks, the nineteenth century Maryland pioneer in the study of oysters, said, “A fresh oyster on the half-shell is no more dead than an ox that has been hamstrung.”  If the oyster is opened carefully, the diner is eating an animal with a working brain, a stomach, intestines, liver, and a still-beating heart.  As for the “liquor,” that watery essence of oyster flavor that all good food writers caution to save, it is mostly oyster blood.

In 1932, at a convention of the Oyster Growers Association in Atlantic City, Dr. Vera Koehring of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries said that it was cruel and inhuman to crack open an oyster’s shell and pry the animal loose.  Dr. Koehring proposed, “The oysters, before being shelled, should be given an anesthetic.”

And:

The New York of the second half of the nineteenth century was a city overtaken by oystermania.  It was usual for a family to have two oyster dinners a week, one of which would be on Sunday.  It was one of the few moments in culinary history when a single food, served in more or less the same preparations, was commonplace for all socioeconomic levels.  It was the food of Delmonico’s and the food of the dangerous slum.  The oyster remained inexpensive.  Shucked oysters were sold by street vendors for twenty-five cents a quart.  The poor person might eat raw oysters from a street stand or have a stew at the market – it was cheap enough – or a wealthy man might get the same raw oysters to start his meal or the same stew for a fish course at the most expensive restaurants.  At Delmonico’s, a serving of six or eight oysters, depending on the size, cost twenty-five cents.

This is also just a great book about New York.  Maybe the best pop history of Dutch New York after Shorto:

Here’s a good NYTimes article from 2006 about oyster varieties.  First two paragraphs:

A FOOTLOOSE young American named Jon Rowley sat in a down-at-the-heels room in Paris one day in the mid-1960’s, reading “A Moveable Feast,” Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously published memoir of life in the city during the 1920’s.

One passage above all seized his attention. Hemingway had written, “As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

I guess my point is, oysters are interesting!  Let’s agree to meet back here and discuss oyster gender sometime.

Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas equiped with activity electrodes to follow their daily behavior 24/7

from Onion AV interview with Mel Brooks

found here.

AVC: A lot of comedians nowadays are very open about their past, and discuss some darkness that drew them to comedy. For some, comedy comes from a place of insecurity and anxiety, very heavy stuff. What’s your take on that? What was there at the very beginning that drove you to comedy? Was it dark?

MB: That’s a good question, about what was the determining factor. What ignited the rocket that sent you up into the vast regions of comedy, and why? I would say, for me, that philosophical treatise about having black beginnings and wanting love to compensate for that, wanting audiences and wanting attention—I say, “Au contraire.” Completely opposite. I want the continuation of my mother’s incredible love and attention to me. I was the baby boy. There were four boys. I was 2 years old when my father died, and my mother had to raise four boys. She must be in heaven, because in those days you washed clothes, you washed diapers. There was no income, and she had to take in home work. My Aunt Sadie brought her work that made these bathing suits and stuff, and ladies’ dresses. And my mother would sometimes do bathing-suit sashes all night. She got $5 or $6, and it was a lot. She could feed us, you know? But certainly she’d feed four boys for that day. It was amazing. But she loved me a lot. I don’t think I learned to walk until I was 5, because she always held me. [Laughs.] She’d say, “You can do anything, good or bad. You’re the best kid.” So I say, “Au contraire.” I think my surge forward into show business and getting audiences to love me was to continue gathering that affection and that love. It’s the opposite of a dark place. I came from a lovely, sunny place. Even though we were poor, you don’t know it. When you’re a kid, you don’t know it. I love franks and beans. I wouldn’t have eaten anything else! I didn’t know that was poor people’s food. [Laughs.] I didn’t know there was such a thing as steak. I knew there were French fries. There was chicken. Things were good.

My mother used to make [lunch for me] when I played with the kids in the street. She’d slice a Kaiser roll and fill it with tomatoes and butter on both sides, salt and pepper. And she’d put it in a brown paper bag and throw it down, and I’d catch it. I’d sit on the curb with Benny and Lenny and whoever, I had my lunch, and I loved it. It couldn’t have been anything better. Except one day I missed. And the brown paper bag, which held the Kaiser roll with all the tomatoes, the sliced tomatoes, and butter, and salt and pepper, smashed on the sidewalk. [Laughs.] So I just carefully peeled it away, peeled the brown paper bag away from it, and held it, and ate it. I began crying, because it was the best thing I had ever eaten in my life. The butter and the tomato had penetrated every crevice of that Kaiser roll. To this day, there will be nothing better.

Bologna in Newfoundland

from this article on the CBC, ht Tyler Cowen.

Garbage Plate

(from wikipedia)

Taco Bell ad inserted into this book?

“Mark Owen” has just returned to Virginia Beach after the Osama raid:

On my way home, I spotted the neon drive-through sign at the Taco Bell.  I always stopped for a south of the border fix on my way home from a deployment, usually in Germany.  I had made this stop several times over the years. Pulling into the line, I ordered two crispy tacos, a bean burrito, and a medium Pepsi.

At the window, a high school kid handed me my food and drink.  I pulled forward into the parking lot and took out a taco.  I spread the paper in my lap and drizzled some fire sauce over the cold, crisp lettuce and ate.