When the waters are cold, when the snow falls, when skies turn oyster gray - that is when it is time to enjoy oysters.
These conditions aligned recently, creating prime bivalve-eating opportunities. On a brisk, biting-cold Saturday afternoon, I hustled over to Lexington Market and warmed my innards with a creamy bowl of oyster stew at Faidley's Seafood.
I bought two pints of shucked Chesapeake Bay oysters and carried them home. It was so cold, the jars did not have to be packed in ice; they stayed plenty chilly in the car trunk.
The next evening, as the skies thickened, my wife and I made an oyster pie. About two dozen Chesapeakes swam in a rich blend of spices, onions, peppers, celery and milk wrapped in a double piecrust. Winter, normally a dreary season, took a sudden lift.
It has been a decent season for East Coast oysters, according to Kurt Friesland of J.J. McDonnell Inc., a wholesale seafood operation in Jessup. Searching up and down the East Coast for shellfish, Friesland supplies a number of Baltimore-area restaurants, including McCormick & Schmick's, Oceanaire, Greystone Grill and Bluestone.
The oyster harvest in New England and points north has been slowed recently by weather, he said. But oystermen, he pointed out, are resourceful types. For example, he said, one supplier in Canada's Prince Edward Island harvests oysters by driving trucks out on a frozen bay, cutting through the ice with a chain saw and pulling up floats of oysters that had been planted there. Decades ago, the waters of the Chesapeake Bay provided much of the oysters for the nation. But now the Maryland harvest, which last year was 154,000 bushels, is a mere trickle in the national supply line.
In a phone conversation from Tilghman Island, Levin F. "Buddy" Harrison III told me tales of the glory years of Eastern Shore oysters. As the Christmas holidays approached, he and other Eastern Shore packers used to load ice-packed barrels of Chesapeake Bay oysters onto a train that stopped in St. Michaels, he said. The train would hurry the oysters to customers in the Midwest who, keeping their barrels in a cold spot, would feast on oysters through New Year's Day. "Having a barrel of Chesapeake oysters in your house was a leg up," a sign of prestige, Harrison said.
The barrels were heavy, and work was rough. "It was bull work; you needed two men to roll those barrels," he said. Eventually, sometime in the late 1970s, Harrison thinks, cardboard boxes replaced the wooden barrels, refrigerated trucks replaced the train, and the barrel era ended.
Nowadays, much of the nation's traffic in oysters moves from west to east. I got a quick read on the state of the Northwest oyster from Jon Rowley, who runs a seafood consulting business in Seattle.
Rowley told me he had just returned from a raw-oyster soiree. He and some members of the Seattle chapter of the International Association of Culinary Professionals had sampled plate after plate of raw Olympias, Pacifics and Virginicas (a Chesapeake Bay transplant), which had just been pulled from the waters of the Totten Inlet in the Puget Sound.
These oysters were in top form, he said. They didn't even need a touch of lemon. The flavor of an oyster, Rowley reminded me, is largely determined by the waters it resides in and the foods it eats. These particular oysters, he said, were benefiting from almost ideal conditions. "There was something about the algae the oysters were eating ... the temperature of the water, cool but not too cold, that made them just wonderful," he said.
Most of the West Coast mollusks are harvested from grounds that oystermen lease, a practice that traces its roots to the days of the California Gold Rush, Rowley said.
In the 1850s, ships would steam into the Puget Sound, shovel oysters into their cargo holds, then hurry to California, where they sold oysters to the hungry gold-mining crowds. The plundering devastated the supply of Puget Sound oysters, irritated the local watermen and led to laws treating shellfish beds as a type of rental property, where watermen can reap what they sow, Rowley told me.
I thanked Rowley for the history lesson and hung up the phone. I felt envious of Rowley's rendezvous with those crisp, raw West Coast oysters, but not for long. Soon I was home, comforting myself with a second helping of oyster pie.
rob.kasper@baltsun.com
Oyster-Bacon Pie
Serves 6
1/2 pound bacon, chopped
1/4 cup flour
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped bell peppers
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 cups milk
2 dozen shucked oysters, well drained
1 double piecrust (see recipe)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Fry the bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp. With a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a platter and drain on paper towels. Set aside.
Reduce the heat to medium and add the flour. Stirring constantly for 5 minutes, make a medium brown roux, the color of peanut butter. Add the onions, bell peppers, celery, salt, cayenne and black pepper.
Stirring constantly, cook for about 8 minutes, or until vegetables are wilted and brown. Add the bay leaves, parsley, green onions, garlic and milk. Blend into the roux-and-vegetable mixture and cook, stirring often, for 8 to 10 minutes, until the mixture is thick and creamy. Fold the oysters and the reserved bacon into the mixture and cook until the edges of the oysters curl, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the heat. Remove bay leaves.
Arrange one piecrust in the bottom of a 9-inch pie plate. Pour the oyster mixture into the crust. Rub the edges of the piecrust with a little water. Place the other crust on top, trim the edges, then crimp the top and bottom crusts.
Make several slashes in the top of the piecrust with a sharp, pointed knife. Place the pie on a baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, until golden brown. Cool for a few minutes. Cut into wedges and serve.
From "Louisiana Real and Rustic" by Emeril Lagasse with Marcelle Bienvenu
Per serving: 658 calories, 18 grams protein, 40 grams fat, 17 grams saturated fat, 55 grams carbohydrate, 3 grams fiber, 89 milligrams cholesterol, 1,328 milligrams sodium
Piecrust
Makes 1 double crust for a 9-inch pan
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup chilled lard or vegetable shortening
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
6 to 7 tablespoons cold water
Sift flour and salt together. Cut half the lard and butter into the flour mixture with your fingers until it has the consistency of cornmeal. Cut the remaining half into the dough until it is pea-sized.
Sprinkle the dough with 6 tablespoons of the cold water, blending the water gently into the dough until it just holds together, allowing the moisture to spread. If necessary add up to 1 additional tablespoon of cold water to hold ingredients together. Divide the dough in half, roll and shape each into a disc.
From "Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition"