Let Us Eat Oysters

By Sandra Olivetti Martin

      Oysters are ours to eat again.

      True, aquaculture ends the traditional summer drought, making oysters accessible all year long.

      Yet never do oysters taste better than in crisp November. The first reliably cool of the traditional oyster-eating R-months, November rouses our hunger for the warm, savory soups and stews that give oysters so satisfying a home. Roast oysters taste their best now, when it’s cool enough that picking up a hot rock feels good — as does cooking them outdoors on a warm grill or fire. From November, through winter, I’ll gladly eat a three-course meal of oysters.

      So this time each year, I go searching for new recipes to feed my oyster appetite. Where better to find them than the U.S. Oyster Festival in St. Mary’s County, where oyster cooks from across the nation compete each year for honor, trophies and sizeable cash prizes at the National Oyster Cook-Off.

       These cooks, amateurs and professionals, have spent hours in their kitchens perfecting their recipes. (Meet them in How a Winner Does It.) From each year’s submissions, Maryland state seafood marketers cull the most likely to please palates and compel home cooks. On the third Saturday of October, the nine finalists meet at the St. Mary’s fairgrounds to cook their recipes for judging and popular tasting.

       Again this year I’m the journalistic judge, along with a pair of culinary professionals. John Shields is proprietor of Gertrude’s Restaurant at the Baltimore Museum of Art, PBS cooking show host and cookbook author. Read about his newest, The New Chesapeake Kitchen, also in this issue. Gwen Novak continues her family’s century-old culinary tradition in Solomons with No Thyme to Cook, a cooking school and party gathering place in her family’s rebuilt Bowen’s Inn, a popular restaurant, marina and hotel for Southern Maryland.

       With us judges, the challenge is to make us want to eat the whole thing. 

Here’s how the first prize winners in the competition’s three categories — hors d’oeuvres, soups/stews, main dishes — won our hearts and stomachs.

Debbie Reynolds’ Crispy Fried ­Oysters Louisiana Poutine Style

       Editor’s note: Perfectly fried may be the most delicious way to eat an oyster. Grand Prize Winner Debbie Reynolds achieved that perfection in this recipe. These oysters can stand by themselves with no gilding. So if it’s a fried oyster you want, try this recipe.

        Reynolds has gilded the lily, adding curds and etouffee gravy. The curds require no more steps than acquisition. The gravy can be made in advance and held; cooking it takes about a half hour, once ingredients are organized. All but the last step, frying, can be done in advance.