Rowan Jacobsen - The Essential Oyster: A Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation

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THIS BE THE OYSTER

This be the cup, brimming fathoms of nectar

This, the well that flows from forever

This be the saltcellar, trencher of tears

and also the teardrop, stone-wept from ocean

This be the stone, lost among cairns,

and there, another, hidden in middens

This be the hull that casts off its seed

Thus grows the reef, encrusted with life

This, ancient vessel, anchored to reef

This be the ark where life resides

and this, tiny cradle, bearer of treasure

This be the oyster, slow-rocked by tides.

Mary Elder Jacobsen

INTRODUCTION

A good oyster smells like the sea breeze skipping over the shore. A bad oyster smells like a murder victim. I prefer the former. But I like how even the latter helps exemplify the essence of the interface: An oyster conveys its life experience directly to your senses.

Was it raised in the briny Atlantic or a brackish bayou? Warm water or cold? Rich or thin? Did it develop down in the pluff mud of the Carolina Lowcountry, or in a floating bag tossed by wind and waves in Willapa Bay? Did its ancestors hail from Japan or the James River? The whole story is there in front of you. You can read some of that story with your eyes, but to really understand, of course, you have to eat it. And when you do, even if you arent yet familiar with the language of oysters, you can usually get the essence right away. Every oyster is a tide pool in miniature, a poem built of salt water and phytoplankton that nods to whatever motes of meaning shaped it. It is the sea made solid. The bay gone sentient.

Not that solid. And not that sentient. An oyster is basically seawater with a purpose. It threatens to collapse back into sea-ness at any moment, the way an emulsion looks for an excuse to give up. This in-betweenness, neither solid nor liquid, can be the oysters unique allure or its primary offense, depending on the audience. Assuming that you are in the first campand if not, gentle reader, you have made a terrible mistakethen you already know that an oysters charm lies in straddling realms, in being animal, vegetable, and mineral all at once. Its also wicked salty and goes great with beer. Sometimes I think its that simple.

SACRIFICE, RENEWAL

A decade ago, I wrote a book called A Geography of Oysters that helped accelerate the oyster mania we now find ourselves in. There have always been oyster lovers, of course, and Id been one of them since my teens, but it wasnt until the early aughts that I got a little clarity on why I loved them. It was because they were landscape. Id been drinking a lot of wine and thinking a lot about terroir, the taste of place. I loved the idea that wine nods to the natural conditions where its grapes grew, but I knew it was no more than a nod: Wine doesnt literally taste like its landscape. In terms of terroir, oysters make wine look like Hawaiian Punch. They are their terrain, and their flavors are a pure condensation of the place they grow. Its the salinity and temperature of the water, the particular mix of plankton they graze on, the wildness of the waves, and the essential mojo of the spot. I did my research and put together my book, hoping that there were a few other oyster geeks out there who might be interested. Turns out there were a lot. We all need living landscapes.