February 20, 2012
Amuse-Bouche
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huître au « miso »
(miso-cured oyster)
My history with oysters is rather brief. By the time I was 35, in the mid-1980s, I had had just a few encounters. All with cooked oysters. All in the South.
My first encounter was Oysters Bienville and Oysters Rockefeller at the lobby bar of the Hotel Saint Louis in New Orleans. My boss, the host of the evening although the bill probably wound up on my expense account so he could sign off on it without oversight from above, did the ordering. Since it was possible that these oysters would turn out to be my dinner—this boss had a habit of inviting a group of us for dinner and drinks, and then cancel the evening after the drinks—I gave them a try. I liked the Bienvilles better than the Rockefellers, but both were nice with a good beer. On many of my subsequent trips to The Big Easy, I stopped by the hotel for a plate of six Oysters Bienville. I continued this practice until the hotel changed management, and the lobby bar was turned into a froufrou wine bar.
My other notable oyster experience took place in the late 1980s at a meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology that was held at the Kiawah Island Resort on Kiawah Island, one of the barrier islands along the coast of South Carolina. On one night of the meeting, all the doctors and vendors were shipped to a remote part of the island for a barbecue. The appetizer was oysters. At about the time we arrived at the site of the barbecue, a couple of burly dudes were piling concrete blocks into a three-foot high U-shape. On the top they placed a thick piece of steel plate, and below they built a raging fire with wood that was scattered around the site. Once the metal was hot, they emptied an entire burlap sack of Apalachicola Bay oysters onto the metal and covered the stack with the wet burlap sack. The oysters steamed away until they were open and warm. They were served with a variety of bottled sauces. There was lots of oysters, but there was also lots of guests to devour them. I only managed to snag two or three. That was probably good since I later heard that many of the doctors got sick from food poisoning attributed to the oysters, and two doctors died as a result.
Throughout the 1990s, I had occasional contact with oysters, and most of the time they were cooked. In the fall of 2001, I was in Carantec, France, for a week in the kitchen of Patrick Jeffroy. (In those days it had one Michelin star. Six months after my visit it was awarded its second star.) One afternoon, the Chef invited me to join him on a little visit to his oyster supplier. The supplier was located a few minutes away on the same bay as the restaurant. Upon arrival, we were invited to taste a sampling of the farm’s oysters along with a little wine and bread. On the table were two large platters of the two types of oysters grown by this vendor. While Patrick and the vendor talked and nibbled, I downed about three dozen of the mollusks. These oysters were less than an hour out of the ocean and marvelously fresh.
As much as I enjoyed eating those fresh oysters that afternoon, I seldom will order a plate of oysters in a restaurant. (I’ll sample those ordered by others.) I like oysters, but since I consider three dozen a proper serving, they always seem to be a bit expensive to me.
Last year Linda at the blog playing with fire and water posted an interesting way to “prepare” oysters. The minute I read her post, I knew that it was something I wanted to try. The principle idea is that the raw oyster is “cured” using Japanese miso paste. It’s a form of misozuki, or miso-cured pickles. (I’ll leave it up to you to compare my preparation below to Linda’s to see how much of it I ripped off and how much is modified.)
When brining foods, it is not uncommon to use a solution that is 5% salt. When making sauerkraut, salt is added at a rate of 5% of the weight of the cabbage. The miso I have in the house has 940 mg of sodium for a 20 g serving. This means that about 12% of the miso paste is salt. Wrapping any food item in miso is then somewhere between dry-salting and brining. Some liquid is produced during the fermentation process, but not as much as when dry-salting vegetables. Maybe because vegetables are as much as 90% water whereas oysters are only about 75% water. When I cured the oysters, I stacked them in such a manner that any loose liquid produced could drain away from them, and they wouldn’t sit in it.
The finished amuse-bouche is in reality three separate preparations: the oyster, the mayonnaise, and the garnish. There is a little additional work to complete the presentation, but none of that is eaten.
This amuse-bouche started a full five days before serving. That was when I purchased the oysters and started the curing. I used the blue point variety because they were readily available, inexpensive, and not too large. Each oyster was cleaned with a brush and running water. It was then shucked, but each muscle was left matched with its shell. For each oyster, two pieces of unbleached muslin were cut so that they were only slightly larger than the shell. Using a small, offset spatula, I applied a 3-mm (18-in) thick layer of miso to the inside of each of the shell halves. I used shiro (white) miso because I had more of that on hand than aka (red) miso. I think that other types of miso would work equally well.
A piece of the muslin was placed over the miso and the two halves “reconnected” over their muscle. Each oyster assembly was given a gentle squeeze to form the miso over the muscle before stacking the re-assembled oysters in a plastic container. The container was set in the back of my refrigerator for the five days before serving. The refrigerator is set at 3 °C (38 °F).
On the day of serving, the now-cured oyster muscles were removed from their “packages” and arranged in a single layer on a plate. The plate remained in the refrigerator until the amuse-bouche was assembled. The deeper half of each oyster-shell pair was cleaned of miso and boiled in water for a few minutes to thoroughly clean it. After boiling, the shells were left to air-dry.
I made two mayonnaises for the oysters. One was the kombu-infused version from Linda’s original post. The other, which in the end I decided to use, was my own variation. I started by making an egg-white mayonnaise using rice vinegar instead of wine vinegar. I also substituted a bit of grated, fresh garlic for the mustard. I used sunflower-seed oil, which is neutral tasting, instead of the olive oil called for in Linda’s recipe. I combined the mayonnaise with a bit of ao-nori, which I keep on hand for when I make okonomiyaki. The ao-nori just gently flavored the mayonnaise without over powering it. It also hydrated very nicely after an hour to preserve the mouth feel of the mayonnaise.
For the garnish, I purchased a single king oyster mushroom around the corner at my local farmers market. As Linda suggested, I cut the mushroom into thin strips using a vegetable peeler. Because the strips were fairly wide, each was cut lengthwise into two pieces. Rather than drying the mushroom slices on my counter top—the day was a bit humid—I placed them in my dehydrator for a few hours. An hour before serving, I brushed them with a little olive oil and baked them on a parchment-covered baking sheet at 150 °C (300 °F). It took about 8 minutes for them brown and crisp.
To aid in the presentation, which would be as individual oysters served on small, square pieces of slate, I mixed some fine salt with egg white to form a thick paste. A small lump of the paste was placed on the center of each slate serving piece. The curved oyster shells were layered with a little of the ao-nori-flavored mayonnaise and a miso-cured oyster gently pressed into the mayonnaise. The oyster shell was then positioned on the salt paste and gently pushed downward. Just before presenting the oyster to my guests, a strip of the now crispy mushroom was added to the arrangement.
Miso-cured oysters have a unique flavor. There still is a reminder of the origins of the dish, but the oyster flavor has been mellowed and enlarged by the miso. As with other lactic-acid fermented foods, the oysters do not taste the least bit salty.

© 2012 Peter Hertzmann. All rights reserved.