Oysters

Some people hate oysters and others love them. My own observation has been that most of those who hâte them have never tasted one. Some doggedly refuse to give them a try, having made the mistake of looking at one too closely, or even worse having glanced at an illustration in a cookbook, one with little arrows pointing out the oyster’s various parts. Oysters are, in fact, not the most beautiful of creatures. Then there’s the texture, which should at first be ignored, and the oyster swallowed whole. But once these initial anxieties are overcome, a fondness develops that borders on the religious, perhaps because nothing so completely captures the pure essence of the sea. There is also the question of raw versus cooked. As M.F.K. Fisher once explained, there are those who will only eat oysters raw, those who will only eat them cooked, and those who will eat them “hot, cold, thin, thick, dead, or alive.” I belong to the latter group, but I also believe that once an oyster is cooked it descends from the realm of the divine into the reality of mere deliciousness.