“It’s a brave man who first ate an oyster”
I had a dilemma this week. I was reading “The Party Cookbook” and found a recipe for a little dish called Osborne Oysters. Now, it just so happened that with the half dozen oysters we buy as a little treat each Saturday, I had all the ingredients on hand to make this dish.
But, let’s face it. Oysters aren’t cheap. And this recipe consisted of a few ingredients that I would never have put together – what if it tasted as bad as it sounded? On the other hand, what if it turned out to be a magical combination that would have the likes of Heston Blumenthal lamenting “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Just to be clear on what I was up against, here are the ingredients for Osborne Oysters:
No, you don’t need to adjust your screen….that is an oyster, a banana and some Jarlsberg. Now you see my dilemma? My gut instinct is that those are three things that should never even be seen together (which is why one lives on the land, one in the sea and one on a tree) let alone combined into a dish. I was still torn though, a little Heston Blumenthal devil on my shoulder was urging me to do it. Then a tiny angel looking suspiciously like Marco Pierre White jogged my memory of a more recent seafood – banana melange.
Early in the current series of Masterchef: The Professionals, one of the candidates made a name for himself by serving Marco Pierre White a fish stew with a banana flavoured aioli.
That name was buffoon.
Marco described it as one of the worst things he had eaten. Ever.
So the big question. Did I make and eat Osborne Oysters?
Not on your life. I listened to my inner MPW and ate those oysters in my preferred fashion…with lemon, Worchestershire sauce and Tabasco. And they were delicious!
My preferred Oyster mix (although I don’t usually measure it out) is:
½ teaspoon lemon juice
3 drops Worchestershire sauce
1 drop Tabasco
Et Voila…down the hatch!
I always follow this up with some bread and butter. I have no idea why but Oysters make bread and butter taste even better than normal!
For anyone more stupid braver than me…here is the recipe for Osborne Oysters:
For everyone else, if you take one thing away from this week’s post it’s to always listen to your inner Marco.
Enjoy your week.
