So, I have this insane love of seafood… And after a winter of roasts and stews, I was more than ready for some freshly shucked wild malpeque oysters from New Brunswick! Enough with all the comfort food, it’s time for oysters, mussels, fish, coconuts, avocados and tomatoes!!! Some of my favourite things 🙂 I had about… 100 live oysters flown over on ice overnight to my place, along with about 50 mussels, because why not.Look at them all!!
Life is all about eating, drinking, and dancing, no? So bring on the oysters!!! AND, I recently started an herb garden on my balcony! I’ve been growing tomatoes, parsley, oregano, tons of basil, thyme, and rosemary. They’re actually doing really well, surprising, since I always kill plants. And pet fish. But they’re looking really good! Soon I’ll be picking my homegrown herbs for all my salads and stuff! Martha Stewart has got some competition from me!
Malpeques from the east coast were perfect for making rockefeller, because they’re larger, stronger tasting and briny oysters. I like the milder tasting, and smaller westcoast kusshis and kumamotos better for eating them raw. We had a lot of oysters though, so after much blood and sweat was shed with all the shucking, we had more than enough to down a few malpeques raw with vodka, lemon, horseradish and tabasco. And I’m not kidding about the bloodshed, my trusty $1 oyster shucker that I got from the dollar store slipped, and sliced open a finger. Whoopsies. It wasn’t my finger though, cos that’s what boys are for. Oyster shucking, clearly! By the way, oysters are SUPPOSEDLY an aphrodisiac, but I guarantee that after all the stinky garlic and parmesan that you consume in the rockefeller version, there will be no sexy times. Also, there is a lot of concern about farmed seafood, especially in BC, Canada, but rest assured, farmed oysters and mussels have very little impact on the environment, and can even improve the ecosystem by filtering out organic material and decreasing nutrient load. The malpeques we got happened to be wild, but as long as they’re not harvested by dredge, it’s fine. What I mean is, you can gorge yourself on these and not feel guilty, because it’s for the environment! At least that’s what I told myself. Okay, enough with the nerdy stuff!
Aaaanyway, back to oysters rockefeller. The shucking is the hard part, but as long as you’ve recruited someone to do it for you, the rest is easy! I used Tyler Florence’s recipe, found here! We downed sooo many of these oysters rockefeller, they were amazing and made the house smell so good!!
Ingredients:
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/3 cup panko
- 2 shallots, chopped
- 2 cups chopped fresh spinach
- 1/4 cup Pernod/white wine
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Dash red tabasco
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
- 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
- 2 dozen oysters, on the half shell
- Rock salt
- Lemon wedges, for garnish
