Oyster Stew

American style oyster stew is creamy to the umpteenth degree and if you have more than one serving of this and don't weigh nearly a ton by the next day, don't blame this recipe! hahaha  Understand, if you want to lighten the calorie count and fat, you can use all milk to make this dish, and remember too, you're not supposed to gulp this down by the gallon. My father loved oyster stew and my mother made it a couple of times a year (she used milk, no cream), in the fall and winter, but never during summer. It has long been held that we should not eat oysters in months without an 'r' in the name; thus, May, June, July and August. Oysters were said to be poisonous then, and there is likely at least some truth to that. The warm weather months in the Northern Hemisphere is when algae blooms take place, and some types of algae can be poisonous to humans. The idea was that oysters would sometimes be affected by these large summer algae blooms, ingesting some, or a lot, of the algae, which then could poison humans who ate the oysters. Since these algae blooms tended to match the warm weather months in the Northern Hemisphere, it was easy for people to remember the precaution by the months without an 'r' in the name. In our times now, I'm not sure how significant an impact these algae blooms have on oysters, because of oyster farming, rather than in the past, when oysters were almost always taken from the wild, but about a year ago when I asked a young fishmonger about the 'r' months and oysters, he told me he'd never heard of that, so either that isn't as prevalent today, or he's the only person on the planet who sells seafood that hasn't heard it. hahaha Another reason talked about in the past was that the warm months are the time for oyster breeding, and that they needed to be left to increase the oyster population. My maternal grandmother believed that oysters eaten with milk in the warm weather months were poison, but she never said why she believed that, and it could just be a variable condition to the algae bloom idea. 

On a comedic note, there is a famous scene, hysterically funny, from one of the Three Stooges' episodes (I believe they repeated it in a later episode or two) from 1941, called "Dutiful But Dumb." The scene involves Curly ordering oyster stew in a little restaurant, but when he drops in some crackers, an oyster pops ups and eats the crackers. Curly tries his best to beat the oyster to the crackers, but the oyster is just too fast, and it squirts some of the stew at Curly. When Curly tries witholding the cracker, the oyster begs like a trained seal for him the drop the cracker into the stew. 

 

Ingredients (3 to 4 servings): 

1 pint shucked oysters (20 to 25 oysters) in their liquid (I always check for bits of shell, just in case)

1 stick butter (1/2 cup), cut into pieces to melt faster

2 cans evaporated milk (not condensed milk!)

1/2 pint heavy cream 

1/4 cup finely chopped white or yellow onion

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/3 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or your favorite hot sauce)

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

tablespoon or two of snipped/chopped chives for garnish 

 

In a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat, melt the butter and add the onion. Saute for just a couple of minutes (do not let the butter brown; remove the pan from the heat if the butter starts to brown, lower the heat if need be; it can always be put back at medium later), and then add the canned milk; cook for another couple of minutes, until the milk heats up, but does not boil. Add the oysters and their liquid and stir well. Add the Worcestershire, cayenne pepper, ground black pepper and salt; stir well to mix everything together. Add the heavy cream and stir well again. Let the oyster stew come up to heat, but do not let it boil! Add some snipped chives to the top of each serving. My father ate oyster stew along with some thick slices of Italian bread; but hey, crackers are fine too, just don't get into a fight with one of the oysters.

The oysters I bought were so good, I just had to put a picture of a couple of the raw ones here, besides the stew ...

WORD HISTORY:

Liquid-This word is closely related to "liquor," a word of Latin derivation and borrowed by English from Latin-based French. "Liquid" goes back to Indo European "wleik," seemingly with the meaning, "to be wet or moist, to make something moist." This gave Latin the verb "liquere," meaning, "to be fluid, to flow like water;" thus also, "to be clear." This gave Latin the adjective "liquidus" meaning, "to be of a fluid state (not of firm, solid or gaseous state);" thus also, "flowing," and this was taken by Latin-based Old French as "liquide," with the same meaning. English borrowed the word in the latter part of the 1300s, initially as "liquide." The use of the word as a noun began in the 1500s, but it was not widespread until circa 1700.