by Hal Eaton » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:06 pm
My mother often cooked sweetbreads (pancreatic glands), heart, tongue, brains -- gourmet items now-a-days, but the cheapest cuts of meat during the recession (1930s). However, she never introduced me to oysters.
That came in Hong Kong in 1952. We ate often in the Parisian Cafe of the Metropole Hotel. Oysters a la Rockefeller were offered by the dozen for six dollars HK. At the exchange rate of 6:1, the dozen oysters on the half-shell were one dollar.
Chesapeake oysters are not what they once were; 30 years ago, anybody who was making a trip from Appalachia to the beach was asked to bring back a bushel of oystrers. We left them on the grill until they opened, dragged them through a light cocktail sauce, and checked which fellow gourmands bit 'em before swallowing. Camping on Florida's beach just north of the Kennedy Center, we dug them out of the shallow water, popped them open, and enjoyed.
Some nanny/theologian (I think a vegetarian Adventist) wrote voluminously about the innards of each oyster in an attempt to find scientific reasons why the Good Book forsook the eating of shell fish. If you come across such writing, ignore it, and enjoy your meal.
Meantime, join with me in thanlsgiving to the first man who ate one of them thar thangs.
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. -- Thomas Paine