Oysters with Shallot Vinegar

I celebrated my last night in Monaco and the end to life by the Mediterranean by cooking up a little seafood celebration for the lawyer and I. This is the first part of a Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food double header, featuring oysters with shallot vinegar followed by mussels and bacon cooked in cider.

Oysters are one of those foods, like olives or kippers, that I can’t believe anyone really likes the first time that they try them. But try them often enough and, although they may not have you falling in love with your dining companion (despite the myth), I’m pretty sure that soon enough most people will fall in love with an oyster’s fresh, briny taste. As the French poet Leon-Paul Fargue wrote, it is “like kissing the sea on the lips”.

Any London pub worth its “gastro” tag will inevitably offer a plate of oysters as part of their menu. As in Gordon’s cookbook, they are usually served simply, open on the half shell alongside a sharp, vinegary sauce.  There are a whole variety of oysters to choose from, but for this recipe I went with some medium sized Fin de Claires, which are grown off the French Atlantic coast. Any oyster type will do for the recipe, but as both England and the States have some fantastic native varieties, do try to stick to local if you can.

You can see the oysters below along with the other two ingredients of shallots and good quality wine vinegar and the all important oyster knife!

To start with, I finely chopped a couple of shallots and mixed them together in a small bowl along with a few good glugs of the wine vinegar.

I set the bowl aside to infuse for an hour while I got on with the prep for the next recipe of mussels and bacon. When I was ready to serve the oysters, I spread out some ice onto a large plate and got on with the not insignificant task of opening up each shell. Shucking oysters is a little bit tricky and takes some getting used to before you are regularly able to pop open a shell with the minimum of fuss and without spilling too much of the salty liquid inside, crumbling too much of the outer shell into the edible flesh, or taking a big gouge out of your hand with the tip of the blade.

In my left hand I wrapped a clean tea towel to help with grip and to serve as some protection should I slip with the knife. A special oyster knife, or shucker, is recommended as regular knifes can be too thin and the blade twists too easily. To open an oyster, I held it in my towelled hand with the curved side facing down so that, when opened, the deep shell would retain as much as the inner liquid as possible. Using the shucker, I wedged the tip in between the two shell halves, as close to the hinge as possible.

With a little force, I pushed the tip of the blade through the small crack between the shells.

Once the knife was in, I twisted it in a circular motion, as you would a screwdriver or a doorknob. The oyster should literally “pop” open.

Once the seal between the two shells was broken, it was then a relatively easy task to run the knife around to cut away the muscle holding the two halves together and remove the upper shell.

And that was it. I set the successfully shucked oyster onto the ice and repeated, more or less successfully, for the rest. You can see the full platter below, served alongside the shallot vinegar and a cold bottle of fizz. A great start to the end of Monaco life!