HNY and Oyster Battles

Well, the drumbeat for 2020 commences.  In the books is the 2019 holidays sort of symbolically  ended by the traditional good-bye wave of the FOJTE’s. 

They were able to squeeze in a visit during his winter break from school.  This was more of a “working” rather than celebratory Christmas.   They were of immense help, upstairs, downstairs, and outside. 

Upstairs:

The big project was the removal of the carpeting on the loft which was very hard for me to negotiate with my office chair.  Doyle’s was “kind” enough to schedule the work while the “kids” were here (to help replace heavy stuff). So we had Christmas eve day punctuated by a compressor and air gun (“Bam, Bam Bam! what did you say??”) as well as the day after Christmas.  But, it turned out well and now my “upstairs” office is much more accessible. With the help of FOJTE doing much of the carrying

Downstairs:

 he and Ms. FOJTE entered all my wines into Cellar Tracker.  If you’re willing to put in the effort, it’s a great tool for knowing what bottles you have and where they are located…

We did our best to lessen the work load

MFO is quite fond of Viognier, and this bottle from Calera was especially good.

Veteran oenophiles know that usually the back label is full of “wine speak” as in “this lovely wine has hints of pineapple and overlaid with waves of citrus and burnt orange” or some such crap.  Not so, the good folk at Calera… everything you wanted to know and more

Outside:

they replaced some pansies that had formed a salad for deer, unearthing the plants and nibbling them to the nub.

This time we enclosed the “new” ones with Cloches and sprayed with DeerAway

Damn deer!

Anyway, a huge thanks to them for caring for their aging parents.

Back to the foodie stuff

Oyster Wars

After the Civil War, the oyster harvesting industry exploded. In the 1880's, the Chesapeake Bay supplied almost half of the world's supply of oysters. New England fishermen encroached on the Bay after their local oyster beds had been exhausted, which prompted violent clashes with competitors from Maryland and Virginia. Watermen from different counties likewise clashed.

BUT! that’s not the war I’m talking about (thank goodness) although it does involve oysters.  My war is much more local.  It is the war between preparing fried oysters via two separate techniques the “traditional” and the “new wave” opportunity

Traditional technique:

heat oil to 350°

Prepare a batter of your choice (I am still trying to duplicate Cow and Fish) with egg, flour, and in this case (forgive me) Old Bay, bread crumbs and a finishing dusting of Southwest Seasoning

I clean the oysters removing the foot and the stringy parts

And then put them in the hot oil flipping if necessary to get crispy and turn them out onto a plate (and dust with the Southwest Seasoning).

Pluses:  nicely formed, crispy all over, creamy inside

Minuses:  Dealing with the oil, and detritus from the frying, wife complaining about oil on her counter.

The newfangled “air fryer” technique

First, get out the device

For this go round (there were predecessors) I wanted to try two different preparations for the oysters, the C&F version and one from the internet using a pre-made coating from that bastion of southern cooking

I prepped the oysters again, and laid out the two preparations: Cow on the left, and Zatarain’s on the right

Oddly (enough) C&F said only flour coating (no eggs), panko bread crumbs, old bay (in the flour) and a post cooking dusting of Southwest Seasoning (which I ground up in the spice grinder).  Other side was egg wash, coat the oysters with the “Fish Fri”, and go at it.

Previous attempts at using the air technique resulted in too long cooking and so this time I reduced the heat to 350 and set it for 4 minutes.

Dredged the Zatarain’s side

Coated the C&F with flour and made the panko adhere as much as possible

And loaded all into the air fryer

After roughly three minutes we had:

5462

The C&F side (left) looked awful but the Zat side looked better

Tasting revealed the C&F to be less than flavorful still, and the Zat versions were quite “zesty”.

Current evaluation:  To date I think overall the boil in oil technique has supplied the better product. Test kitchen experimentation will continue, however.

Wow, this got long, sorry, thanks for hanging in!

And what the hell, I’ll throw in one of many growing list of rants that I have recently made notes on:

I know this time of year is when resolutions are made to lose weight, get healthy, eat right, and so on.  Strike while the iron is hot.

Peloton blasts you with commercials (please forgive me) featuring ladies who obviously are fit and trim, dressed in tight fitting yoga pants, and many shots taken to seemingly (is it me?) feature the posterior of them.  Never have I seen one showing anybody who is obviously overweight, and really might benefit from an exercise machine.. 

Okay, enough getting back on track, more to come

DFD