It is the week of Valentines - don't be blinded by the Romance-Chocolate-Industrial-Complex. Instead, this week's festivities begin with a few words on the noted aphrodisiac, oysters from our friend, Charlie Seluzicki:
A few days ago I was blindsided by an intense craving for oysters on the half shell. It did not take me long to figure that I had not eaten any since before Christmas and here it was the first week of February. The next day I would be across the river on business, so I waited. Newman's Seafood is in the same neighborhood and they have a large live tank which at any time might be home to upwards of a half dozen oyster varieties in addition to clams, dungeness crabs and Maine lobsters. The selection was small that day, only three types, but among them a favorite from British Columbia's Nootka Bay. They were real beauties just on the small side of medium with a deep cup and lovely salinity. I ate them for lunch, for dinner and for breakfast the next morning.
It happened that on the same day that I bought oysters, I picked up a copy of Ruth Spear's excellent COOKING FISH AND SHELLFISH (1980). After lunch I sat down with it and read the chapter on oysters. It was there that I encountered "oyster hunger," an expression that has eluded me my entire oyster eating life:
Indeed the phenomenon of "oyster hunger"- well known in such great oyster
towns as Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans, where a person is
suddenly possessed with the need to down several dozen raw oysters- may
be an instinctive iodine hunger.
Was that what I was experiencing? Food cravings are not uncommonly related to food chemistry. I am not quite certain. So I investigated "oyster hunger" a bit more. The expression is hardly common. A Google search brings up only three references. One is faux ("oyster, hunger"), one individual mentions it in a very general way in a blog and one cookbook-Frederick's LONG ISLAND SEAFOOD COOKBOOK (1939, Dover reprint 1971)- specifically references the matter of "instinctive iodine hunger." Oddly though he asserts that the phenomenon occurs in persons not from the aforementioned great oyster towns. "The real oyster educated person," he insists, "does not gorge periodically but dines on oysters in many ways on more frequent intervals." Indeed. His cookbook contains over 120 recipes for oysters.
A little breakthrough in understanding came when I noticed that on the copyright page of Spear's book that portions of the title in hand had appeared previously in her 1975 EAST HAMPTON COOKBOOK. The cookbook writers who speak of "oyster hunger" both hail from Long Island. Though proof is sparse, it is an indicator that we are quite possibly dealing with a bit of regional food lore with some basis in fact. Whatever the case, I'll take my minerals on the half shell any day.
Charles Seluzicki
It happened that on the same day that I bought oysters, I picked up a copy of Ruth Spear's excellent COOKING FISH AND SHELLFISH (1980). After lunch I sat down with it and read the chapter on oysters. It was there that I encountered "oyster hunger," an expression that has eluded me my entire oyster eating life:
Indeed the phenomenon of "oyster hunger"- well known in such great oyster
towns as Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans, where a person is
suddenly possessed with the need to down several dozen raw oysters- may
be an instinctive iodine hunger.
Was that what I was experiencing? Food cravings are not uncommonly related to food chemistry. I am not quite certain. So I investigated "oyster hunger" a bit more. The expression is hardly common. A Google search brings up only three references. One is faux ("oyster, hunger"), one individual mentions it in a very general way in a blog and one cookbook-Frederick's LONG ISLAND SEAFOOD COOKBOOK (1939, Dover reprint 1971)- specifically references the matter of "instinctive iodine hunger." Oddly though he asserts that the phenomenon occurs in persons not from the aforementioned great oyster towns. "The real oyster educated person," he insists, "does not gorge periodically but dines on oysters in many ways on more frequent intervals." Indeed. His cookbook contains over 120 recipes for oysters.
A little breakthrough in understanding came when I noticed that on the copyright page of Spear's book that portions of the title in hand had appeared previously in her 1975 EAST HAMPTON COOKBOOK. The cookbook writers who speak of "oyster hunger" both hail from Long Island. Though proof is sparse, it is an indicator that we are quite possibly dealing with a bit of regional food lore with some basis in fact. Whatever the case, I'll take my minerals on the half shell any day.
Charles Seluzicki
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