Consider the OysterM.F.K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our "poet of the appetites," here pays tribute to that most delicate and enigmatic of foods---the oyster. As she tells of oysters found in stews, in soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel--and of the pearls sometimes found therein--Fisher describes her mother's joy at encountering oyster loaf in a girls' dorm in he 1890's, recalls her own initiation into the "strange cold succulence" of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve's famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers. Plumbing the "dreadful but exciting" life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose. |
Contents
Love and Death Among the Molluscs | 3 |
A Supper to Sleep | 8 |
Ris for Oyster | 15 |
The WellDressed Oyster | 20 |
Take 300 Clean Oysters | 27 |
A Lusty Bit of Nourishment | 30 |
Pearls Are Not Good to | 47 |
Those Were Happy Days | 54 |
Soup of the Evening Beautiful Soup | 58 |
Love Was the Pearl | 64 |
My Country Tis of Thee | 68 |
As Luscious as Locusts | 72 |
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