Make at your own discretion broiled oysters

Monday, July 15, 2013

We’re officially out of oyster season. Actually, we’ve been out for a while, but it’s taken me quite some time to make this dish as it calls for a last-minute trip to the fish market to pick up oysters. Which is completely out of the way, making this a less-than practical dish.

To make matters worse, it was expensive and not that delicious. So really, I don’t know why I’m posting this recipe other than the fact that it’s a window into my efforts as opposed to something that I’d really like you to cook for your family.

But I’ve been craving oysters lately. Hopefully because they’re contraband right now and not because I’m pregnant.

You know that handy little mnemonic about only eating oysters in the months that have an “R”? Well it’s true. Do not eat oysters outside of those months. Unless they’ve been cooked to a sad, rubberized version of themselves, which is exactly the task I took upon myself this week.

A little backstory: last July, I went out to dinner with Rodney and friends and got horribly sick from eating a half dozen Long Island oysters. At the time of our dinner, I was blissfully unaware of a developing outbreak of something called Vibrio Parahaemolyticus.

Vibrio what?

I’ll get to that in a minute.

But an actual outbreak. A little bit like this, but without the biohazard suits. So technically, just a few people from the Health Department standing around, not all that worried, but investigating what might have caused the high number (9) of oyster-related bacterial infections that came through the Tri-state hospitals that week.