Oysters With Mignonette Sauce

If you like oysters, as I do, this is a tasty way to enjoy them. Super simple, and I've put a couple of ways you can modify the recipe to give you some variety.

The "Billion Oysters Project" is a science endeavor heavily involving students to try to restore the ecosystem of New York Harbor by adding one billion live oysters to the harbor by the year 2030. For more information or to help: https://billionoysterproject.org/#

Ingredients:

12 freshly shucked oysters on the half shell
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 tablespoons finely chopped sweet onion (or shallots)
good pinch sea salt

For a "hot" kick, add 1 teaspoon sambal oelek (hot chili paste)
For a sweetened touch, mix 1 teaspoon honey with the white wine vinegar first

Mix and chill before serving sauce with oysters on the half shell

I used shallot in my Mignonette sauce...

WORD HISTORY:
Hull-This word, related to "hell," an original English word from its Germanic roots, and distantly related to "cell" and "cellar," both of Latin derivation and borrowed by English, goes back to Indo European "kel/khel," which meant "cover." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "hallo/hullo," which meant, "covered area," and the root gave Germanic "hul/hel," meaning "cover," and this then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "hulu," which meant, "husk, seed cover, pod cover." This then became "hul," before the modern form, "hull." The verb form, meaning, "to remove the hulls from grains, vegetables or fruit," developed from the noun in the first half of the 1400s, at first as "hullen." This "may" be the same word for "the frame of a ship," but this is uncertain, although the "pod and seed shape" of ships seems to be the connection to the word "hull." Anyway, forms still "alive" in other Germanic languages: German has "Hülse" (husk, shell, pod), "Hülle" (cover, wrapping") and the verb "hüllen" (to wrap, to cover);  Low German Saxon has "Hüls" (pod), Dutch has the verb "hullen" (to wrap, to envelop).