National: Go Shuck Yourself

It was a few months ago that MP:SF editor Adam lamented that he wanted oysters but they weren’t in season. Well, we’ve been safely into the R months for a while now, and — if you haven’t already — it’s high time that you slurp some bivalves.

Oysters are readily available on the menu at old standbys like Snockey’s Oyster & Crab House — and are cropping up in more and more on-trend iterations on menus like Coquette Bistro & Wine Bar. But for all their ubiquity in winter months, we’ve always rankled at the idea of shelling out (as it were) for what is essentially a no-prep dish.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate the labor involved — trust, we’ve lost too many bits of finger to aggressive avocado-chopping not to balk at the terrifying apparatus required for oyster shucking. It’s more that we feel a pervasive sense of wussiness at plonking down at a raw bar and ordering a dozen, extra mignonette, when we haven’t felt the cool, rocky slime of an unshucked oyster shell in our own palm.

So three cheers for the Village Voice, whose resident foodie Sarah DiGregorio takes us through the shucking process step-by-step, framing it all in the economically comforting notion that the money you would spend on a half-dozen oysters at a restaurant could instead be redirected towards the purchase of a full dozen home-shucked oysters — plus a bottle of wine. Throw in a couldn’t-be-simpler recipe for mignonette sauce from 1964 and some basic cocktail sauce (horseradish to taste), and it’s a perfect spread.

Until such time as we completely gash the crap out of our hands, consider us sold.

Recession Special: Eat More Oysters [Fork In The Road]

Snockey’s Oyster & Crab House [MenuPages]
Snockey’s Oyster & Crab House [Official Site]Coquette Bistro & Wine Bar [MenuPages]
Coquette Bistro & Wine Bar [Official Site]

[Photo via star5112’s Flickr]

National: Go Shuck Yourself