A Gob of Desire Here´s a riddle: What´s the similarity between an oyster and an author? And the answer: Both can transform a source of irritation into a pearl. The humble oyster, resting blissfully in its mother-of-pearl treasure chest, is accordingly an author´s favourite. Opinions differ greatly among the less wise. For an animal, the oyster itself is so primitive, it makes daytime TV quite highbrow by comparison. It hardly has a measurable IQ. Some of the dumbest creatures in creation broadcast themselves vociferously both day and night. The oyster, however, stays proudly, admirably, silent. What the oyster does for entertainment during its lifespan, which can be almost twenty years, is to filter sea water. Up to five litres an hour. Some of the particles in the water it absorbs as nourishment, some it ejects, and some it just can´t get rid of. It´s when a grain of sand, or some other small foreign object, becomes trapped inside the oyster, and lazily rubs against the mother-of-pearl inner surface for two or three years, that a natural pearl is formed. This is how the mollusc´s defence system works. We´ve found pearls in restaurant oysters, and it´s not such a festive occasion as you might imagine – the end result can be a visit to the dentist. However, when the oyster lover ends up at the doctor's surgery, the situation is far worse. With serious oyster poisoning, you may not even get there in time. You may succumb to death within thirty minutes. Even with proper health insurance, it takes some courage on the part of the disbeliever, ordering this food for the first time. Such poetic praise is lavished upon the oyster, yet what he finds upon his plate is a slimy, greyish gob consisting of heart, gills, reproductive organs, digestive system, the works — not even properly dead. The king of wimps himself, Woody Allen, puts it this way: «I won´t eat oysters. I want my food dead — not sick, not wounded, but dead.» One counted amongst the true believers is the French author Guy de Maupassant, who described the oysters of Ostende as: «Charming and plump, like small ears enclosed within a shell, they melt between the tongue and palate like confections.» Now we´re approaching the core of the matter. The oyster´s sensuality. That´s what´s scaring off the wimps and the unwise. How erotic is an oyster, in fact? Just think of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, who is born fully grown and naked, from an oyster shell. She immediately gives birth to the demigod, Eros. Greek mythology is seldom more explicit than that. So where did it start? One might speculate that the oyster´s reputation as an «aphrodisiac» was coined by a long since forgotten oyster enthusiast, perhaps in Neolithic times, urging a sceptical friend to try this delicacy: «Even if you don´t like it, it will work wonders for your sex life.» (Something similar must have happened, we assume, when the link was made between oatmeal and «fibre».) How many millions or billions of oysters that have since been sacrificed to prove or disprove this myth, is impossible to calculate. Casanova apparently consumed five dozen in his morning bath with the lady of the moment, and it seemed to work for him. On the other hand, the writer Norman Lewis tells of male pearl divers on the island of Camaran, off the Arabian peninsula, who eat oysters as the mainstay in their diet — they have notoriously low sex drives, but pressure sickness could possibly be blamed. On a slightly vulgar note: Of course there is something about the taste, the slipperiness, and the sensual natural consistency of the oyster. The funny thing is that we´ve heard, from both sides, so to speak, that eating oysters can be compared to «swallowing sperm» and to «eating pussy». (Those consulted don´t usually engage in both activities). One of the basic requirements for human reproduction is that sperm and vaginal fluids are of different chemical compositions, especially in terms of acidity. It doesn´t taste similar at all! All that remains, is the unquestionably intimate nature of the act. (But the oyster is in fact a hermaphrodite. When the sea warms up in summer, the mature oysters — aged one year or older — first become female, then pregnant. This, just as much as the danger of poisoning, is the reason why oysters were traditionally considered edible only in months with an «r». The spawning oyster doesn´t taste as good. Today, farmed oysters are sterile, and taste just as great in summer as in winter.) Quite a few men, usually beginners in one field or the other, will also contend that the oyster guards its juicy plumpness with unreasonable chastity; either great powers of seduction or brute force must be applied. With some experience, one arrives at the conclusion that a firm, practiced manipulation is all that it takes. Biochemically, the oyster is rich in proteins, carbohydrates, monounsaturated fats, Vitamin B^12, iron, zinc and copper, with traces of magnesium, manganese, iodine and phosphorous. A steady oyster diet will unvariably lead to a feeling of abundant energy that should improve sexual performance. Faith can also move mountains ... Humans discovered early on that the science of oyster production was too important an issue to leave to nature alone. Oyster farming was invented two thousand years ago. The Romans, who were passionate about their oysters, were forever searching for new oyster beds on their conquests. They found them in especially large quantities on both sides of the English Channel. The oysters were better than their Mediterranean counterparts, so they took samples home and started farming them. And not only that; thousands of slaves carried fresh oysters from the Atlantic Ocean to Rome. There, rich and hungry citizens sat waiting. Greediest of all, according to classical sources, was the bulimic Emperor Vitellius, who was known to down 1200 oysters at a time. If these were borne on horseback from, say, Brittany, one might easily calculate that the odds of dying from oyster poisoning are lower than most sceptics believe. (Vitellius, who ruled Rome less than a year, and was tortured, killed and flung in the Tiber by the soldiers of his rival Vespasian in 69 A.D.,was notorious as the lunch date from Hell. He was known to book two meals by the same host each day, demanded to be wined and dined at the cost of a year´s wages — twice — and repaid the compliment by throwing up all over the place and getting blindly, abusingly drunk. Being an oyster aficionado doesn´t automatically make you a civilized person.) To be able to farm oysters, the ancients had to understand their life cycle. The first attempt we know of, was made by Aristotle in his natural history in the 4th century B.C. He claimed that the oyster self-generated from slime by a «spontaneous» process. This was not so. It grows from microscopic eggs (each oyster can lay from 10 to 100 million eggs a year) to little larvae called «spat», that swim freely for a period and then attach themselves to other oysters, other host organisms or to dead matter such as ropes, wooden poles etc. The Greeks used to throw pottery shards into the sea, hoping oysters would attach themselves to them. (In ancient Athens, oyster shells were used as ballots. The voters in what was arguably the world´s first democracy would scratch the symbol of their candidate on the inside shells, which were then collected.) If this creature survives its first months in the sea, it will eventually form a hard shell and a powerful retractor muscle, that protects it from most predators. Oysters are social creatures and gather together, preferably in great oyster beds at a depth of 6-10 meters. Here they lie strategically placed: The tide sweeps plankton, their favourite food, in from the sea, and the ebb carries nutrients and minerals from the soil on the way out. Because climate and nutritional conditions are so decisive, the gifted expert can taste where upon the planet an oyster has grown, almost with the same certainty with which a wine expert can triangulate a particular wine. There also are more than one species. We will concern ourselves with the four most important. The North European oyster´s scientific name is Ostrea edulis, and is often called «natives» in English (belon or plat in French). It has a prettily rounded, greyish shell, is rather shallow and is usually regarded as the finest. There are or have been large beds of them in Brittany, along the English coast and around Ireland (some say Irish edulis are the best). The Portuguese oyster (Crassostrea angulata) is more hardy than the northern variety, and now dominates the oyster market in Europe. It is more oblong in shape, deeper of shell, and brownish of hue. The French call them huitres creuses. Along the American Atlantic coast grows the Crassostrea virginica, which once was so prolific that it was a menace to sailors. It grows about as big as the Portuguese oyster (up to 17 cm long), and will by East Coast Americans, and by them only, be hailed as the «world´s best». Finally, we have the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, which — to make it even more complicated — is possibly the same species as C. angulata, or the Portuguese oyster. Growth conditions are crucial. When you get closer to tropical waters, the oysters become more sluggish in taste. As with all shellfish, cold water equals slow growth equals more taste. On the other hand, tropical oysters are more likely to contain pearls. Then, of course, human ingenuity enters the picture — as we remember, we´ve had two thousand years to improve on nature and perfect the process. French oyster farmers in particular, notably, the farmers on the island of Oléron outside of La Rochelle in the Biscayne, have developed this into a very noble art. Oyster farming here consists of three phases: the larvae or spat are encouraged to attach themselves to a special kind of tile, and are left to grow in shallow waters for eight months. They are then harvested and spread amongst «parks» or basins for the second phase, which in French is called élevage (rearing). Having grown here for several years, they are moved to the last and most luxurious part of their schooling, in five-star accommodation from an oyster´s point of view. This is called affinage (maturing). When an oyster graduates from this system, it may have passed its exams cum laude, and earned itself the right to the title Marennes-Oléron fine de clair. There is no equivalent. The oyster may be a belon or (usually) a creuse; whatever the case, it is the growth conditions that help them develop this incomparable taste — so mineral as to taste almost metallic, so plump and fresh and full of taste that one oyster is almost enough. That is, if you weren´t prepared to kill for another. In cookbooks, you will find recipes for oyster chowder, gratinated oysters, Oysters Rockefeller, deep fried oysters and other fancy preparations. Oyster aficionados snigger at such recipes, knowing they were all invented in the United States in the nineteenth century, when the Americans were overfishing badly, and therefore sought to expand the market to the Woody Allens and their timid sort. To gratinate or deep fry a Marennes-Oléron fine de clair is about as clever as pouring Coca-Cola into a Chablis grand cru. You are allowed a squeeze of lemon, perhaps a drop of Tabasco, and possibly, as the ultimate wantonness, a sauce mignonette, which is finely chopped shallots, diluted red wine vinegar and a little pepper. Hardly any «cooking» is therefore required to enjoy your oysters; another very attractive thing about them. This has led fanatics to conclude that oysters are in fact not «food», and that desire for them should not be restrained by anything so trivial as scheduled meals. The Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca realized this two millenniums ago: «Oysters are really not food, but work wonders by tricking your full stomach into continuing to eat.» A dozen oysters and a glass of cold champagne is the perfect antithesis to a «meal»; a complete enjoyment that never upsets the architecture of your appetite. Whether it´s midnight or six in the morning doesn´t matter. Oysters are always and everywhere counted in dozens — apparently since before Christianity, and probably long after even the English adopted the metric system. Half a dozen, which in our sober age has become almost a standard serving, is best enjoyed as a starter — if the next course arrives tout de suite. When desire sets in at six in the morning, it is most practical to have some basic knowledge about storing and opening your own. First, every oyster born is marked «this side up». The deep end should always rest downward, or else the juice will spill, and the juice is as important to the oyster experience as the flesh. The reason oysters are usually served on crushed ice is not that oysters are especially vulnerable to temperatures, but to prevent them from tipping and spilling their juice. You may just as well arrange them carefully on a bed of sand, or salt. (An opened oyster will form new juice if left alone for a while, but this takes patience you may not have.) Oysters should never be stored wrapped in plastic, but may be kept in a refrigerator in a basket longer than you think — up to several weeks, depending on when they were harvested. Farmed oysters are always marked with a «use by»-date. Opening them is a matter of training. Use a sharp knife with a short, rather broad blade (the so-called oyster knives are not necessarily the best, but they do help protect clumsy fingers). Hold the oyster steadily horizontal in one hand in a folded dish towel, find the muscle joint on the long side of the oyster, ease the blade in and twist it 60 degrees, while pressing towards the «roof». This will sever the muscle, and the oyster´s fresh plumpness is yours to enjoy. There is a wading waterbird, the American oystercatcher, who accomplishes this feat with its hard, flattened beak. This lucky creature sustains itself on oysters alone. We did mention champagne, didn´t we? The mineral quality of a Chablis (the grapes grow in gravelly soil with large deposits of fossilised crustaceans) is considered the best or second best, depending on personal preferences. The medicine we swear by is not quite as orthodox, but ultimately irresistible: Oysters and Sancerre. Alive and violated They lay on their beds of ice. Bivalves: the split bulb and philandering sigh of ocean. Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered. From «Oysters» by Seamus Heaney (Nobel laureate for Literature, 1995)