Oyster School: This Cook's Story

THIS COOK’S STORY

Oysters 101 Class at The Brooklyn Kitchen taught by W&T Seafood

Ingredients

Lots of Oysters

The Brooklyn Kitchen

Nellie & Mathew from W&T Seafood

Beth, friend and fellow food lover

Directions

Put on your name tag. Learn. Shuck. Eat. Shuck some more. Learn some more. Cook. Eat. Eat. Eat.

THIS COOK’S STORY

Everyone is aware my knife skills suck and I decided it was time to do something about it. I had read about a class offered at The Brooklyn Kitchen, so I hit up the interweb to check it out. Bad news: the April knife skills class was filled up. Good news: there were tons of other classes including: Oysters 101!

Oysters?

Why Oysters 101 as my first foray into obtaining a culinary education? Over the past few years I’ve started to eat oysters and while I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had them, I’ve always enjoyed them. But, I don’t really know much about those enigmatic sea creatures…and gd, I wanted to know more. If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I haven’t really tackled any meat or seafood yet. The reason for that is pretty simple: fear. I don’t know how to cook either. So, when the weather turned summery and the opportunity presented itself, Oysters 101 seemed like the perfect idea.

Oh and of course, I thought that shucking and serving oysters would be a pretty impressive dinner party trick. I know I’d be really impressed if someone had me over and they did that…

First things first.

I wasn’t about to attend my first cooking class alone, no matter how friendly and fun it looked online. I believe in safety in numbers, especially in foreign social situations. So, I enlisted my friend Beth who loves food as much as I do (and def knows way more about it than I do) to come along for the great Oyster adventure.

In order to take Oysters 101 at The Brooklyn Kitchen, we had to get to Brooklyn. And while I used to shudder at the thought of leaving the island, I must admit that over the past couple years the distant land known as Brooklyn, has grown on me. But, while I may be warming up to Brooklyn, I still have pretty much zero navigational skills when I’m there and every time I surface from the subway I feel like I took a portal into a foreign country—and I may as well be in one for how much I know about my new, non-Manhattan surroundings. Luckily, The Brooklyn Kitchen is very easy to find and thanks to my beloved Hop Stop, we made it to our destination with time to spare.

Let’s get learned!

As we approach The Brooklyn Kitchen, I immediately sense that I could end up doing some serious shopping damage there. But I push on past the racks of awesome things I want to buy because I came here to LEARN, not buy. Buying is for the trip I immediately plan in my mind for the weekend. Ok, so up the steps we go and into the kitchen learning area.

We met Nellie and Mathew, our Oyster gurus from W&T Seafood, slapped on some name tags and picked out spots. I knew immediately this class was going to be awesome for several reasons:

· it smelled great

· all the ingredients layed out made me immediately hungry

· there were handouts at all the spots with recipes & oyster learning information

· as soon as we were all sitting, Natalie put a full plate of oysters in front of us

· there were handouts (yes, I mentioned that already, but I LOVE handouts)

Nellie started off the class by teaching us some Oyster basics and general info which was cool. Here are just a few of the things I learned:

· east coast oysters are brinier than west coast oysters

· oysters are one of the most sustainable kinds of seafood

· Blue Point oysters can come from anywhere on the Long Island Sound

· almost all the oysters we eat are farm raised

· oysters taste different when they are spawning, and while you can eat them then, its better not to.

They spawn in months ending in R, so that’s when you don’t eat oysters and they are out of season

(except when they are farm raised, then you can eat them all year round since the farm raised ones are

special, sexless oysters that don’t spawn)

· the water, conditions and areas oysters grow in all contribute to their taste and flavor

· If an oyster’s bill is opening then it means its dead or dieing and is not good to eat

· When storing oysters you should put them in the refrigerator, never the freezer and put them in a bowl and

cover them with damp dishtowels. You should never submerge them in water because it will get inside them

and wash out their flavor.

*note: I’m pretty sure all of this is right, but I was very distracted by hunger and anticipation of shucking and eating, so I can’t be fully responsible for all info.

Here a shuck, there a shuck, everywhere a shuck, shuck!

After we got the lowdown on Oysters, it was time to learn how to shuck! I had visions of seeing a Top Chef challenge where the professional chef contestants struggled through shucking and one even had a bloody dishtowel as a result of shuck related injuries. Uh oh. Was I gonna injure myself? God knows, I am not graceful or agile in the kitchen…

But, Mathew & Nellie walked us through the shucking and taught us how to hold the oyster and use the knife to pop the hinge before cutting through the muscle & opening it up. And guess what? I did it! I successfully shucked!

Ok, here’s the one and only thing I learned last night that I could’ve done without learning. I think I probably knew this somewhere deep down but chose to block it out. We were shucking, and at one point during a particularly difficult oyster to unhinge, I heard Mathew say something like, “Oh, this one is really fighting back.” Uh, what? Oh yeah, that’s right, they are alive when we eat them. While the thought is pretty gross, it’s really not that bad since they don’t have any nervous systems, so I’ve decided they aren’t really animals, they are plants that live underwater in shells. Problem solved!

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that before we started shucking we made 2 sauces: cocktail & Mignonette, so we could eat as we shucked. Excellent idea.

Fire up the burners!

After we took a small shucking break (where I browsed the store and picked out tons of things to buy on my weekend shopping trip) we came back for some more shucking, so we could prep for the Oyster Stew & Oysters Rockefeller we were going to make. Beth and I were responsible for shucking 12 more oysters: cake---we were pros now (sort of, kind of, maybe…not). So, we put our 12 oysters into a pan that was filled with salt (to hold the shells in place) and got to making the topping for the Oysters Rockefeller.

The topping consisted of cooked spinach, shallots, garlic, blah, blah---the only real ingredient you need to know about is the BACON. It was from The Meat Hook downstairs at The Brooklyn Kitchen and Mathew had told us it was amazing, but boy was it AMAZING. I think what really made it insanely delicious was that we cooked the spinach and other ingredients in the bacon fat from when Mathew had prep’d the bacon. Ummmm: DELICIOUS. So delicious in fact, I was too distracted to even take photos of the topping making process (sorry).

While the Oysters baked in the oven, I tore myself away from gorging myself on the extra topping I was now eating out of a bowl to make some Oyster Stew. Wanna know how you make Oyster Stew? You put butter, oysters and half in half in a pan, and cook it until it bubbles and then you eat it. It was so good…and soooo rich. The fact that it consisted solely of butter and cream made me think Paula Deen would also really enjoy it too, so I'll file this away in my 'recipes to make if Paula Deen comes over' file. And you're welcome for the sweet action shot of Oysters being poured into the pan:

Just as I slurp down my last spoon of the stew, the Oysters Rockefeller are done---yay, more eating!

And so my first adventure in culinary education ended as I hope they all do: with a full belly, some sweet new skills and handouts---did I mention before, they had handouts, I love handouts!

And a very special thanks to our Oyster gurus, Nellie and Mathew---it was such a fun night & I can’t wait until you guys have another class---I’m ready to conquer the sea!!!