Notes from an Oyster Shucker

So the CC decided to learn how to shuck his own oysters and here are the notes from that.

1. It's harder than you think. Way harder.
2. Safety first. The CC cannot emphasize this enough!
3. Equipment matters. Please invest in the following:
1. a "serious" oyster shucking knife,
2. a set of chain gloves — it's basically chain-mail for the other hand,
3. a rough scrub-brush, and
4. some cheap towels.
4. They are filthy. Epically filthy. Hence the scrub-brush. You will be spending a lot of time scrubbing to prep them so get a good one.
5. They are seriously jagged. Hence the chain gloves.
6. It's hard to pry them open in the first place. Hence the chain gloves. Dunking them in water (to warm them up briefly) moves along the process.
7. Take a look at videos online on how to severe the "adductor muscle". The CC thought this would be hard but it's actually the easiest part.
8. It's way way harder than you think. Practice makes perfect.

And yes, they are exactly as amazing as ever to eat.

Les huîtres v/s かき (Kaki)

It's always very entertaining when two great food cultures have diametrically opposed views on a subject.

For starters, it doesn't happen very often because the human palate is pretty consistent. What's left behind is the purest form of the arbitrary nature of culture.

The point in contention here is the nature of oysters and how they are best consumed.

First the similarities — both the French and the Japanese agree that oysters are amazing and worth consuming in spite of the incredible effort involved in opening them.

(The CC would like to point out that oyster middens are some of the oldest sites involving ancient humans. Clearly, our ancestors agreed with both the French and the Japanese!)

What they differ on is how.

The French, from whom we've obtained some of our biases, insist that the ideal way to eat the oyster is raw where it "tastes of the sea".

The Japanese are equally insistent that the ideal way is that it be cooked (either grilled or fried) where the "juices are concentrated".

(Frying and grilling are precise ways of concentrating the meat by removing water.)

One would ordinarily have expected the Japanese to be enthusiastic about the raw oyster but they are adamant that oysters are best consumed cooked. There is no "oyster sashimi".

The CC will leave this open as a "striptease" but his views on these subjects tend to be relatively clear.

Weigh in on the subject in the comments.

Trapped (?)

This is pretty much the epitome of a "First World problem" but the CC feels trapped by the fact that he has too many amazing dishes in his repertoire and that the seasons change so fast.

Basically, there are too many dishes that the CC loves with seasonal ingredients with no room for anything else. It had to happen eventually with the CC's obsessive nature.

Two parts of the CC's brain are going to war with each other:

1. Love it. MAKE IT!!!
2. Novelty is amazing. Let's make something new.

It's a straight-up function of age. The obvious interpretation would be that there are only so many rounds left on the merry-go-around but the CC is young! It's not that.

It's more to do with how do we hold on to that original sensation when we knew nothing, and the entire world was afresh with the sense of discovery, and how we discover it and make it our own.

The only empirical evidence the CC has about this is that every time he has had this absurd feeling (and he's had it about four times now), there's always been a new breakthrough waiting in an unexpected direction.

Let's hope the empirical truth comes through a fifth time.