Shuck and awe

Eating oysters has been described as battery-licking for grown-ups, a thrilling experience that brings all your senses to bear. Joanne Gibson reveals why every oenophile should also be an ostreaphile.Banished from Venice and disqualified from a career with the Church, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova was a reprobate. Never mind his way with the ladies; the 18th century lawyer lied, cheated, stole, squandered fortunes and ate at least 50 raw oysters a day. And it is the latter which many – even today – regard as most repugnant.

< p> “I will not eat oysters,” said Woody Allen. “I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded, dead.” In today’s “safe” food culture of preservatives and overcooking, there are many who can’t stomach the thought of slipping something raw down their throats. As writer Jonathan Swift summed up, way back in the 18th century: “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” But I disagree. Our early ancestors, observing the fervour with which oystercatchers jabbed, smashed and chiselled away at those tough, muddy shells, must have realised that there was something pretty tasty inside – and, indeed, scientists exploring a cave at Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay last year found evidence that oysters were enjoyed some 164 000 years ago. This, anthropologists say, was much earlier than expected, and evidence of “increasingly sophisticated behaviour”.

In a way, it’s a journey many of us make in our own lifetime – from ice cream and coca cola to carpaccio and fine wine; from food and drink offering immediate gratification and a sugar rush to those which require a bit of thought and effort – and end up bewitching your mind precisely because of that. You don’t drink fine wine to quench your thirst; nor do you eat oysters to fill up. And those who love these things find it difficult to explain to those who don’t. But let’s try…

A good starting point is sushi. If you like sushi, you’re already happy with the concept of raw seafood, as far as both texture and flavours are concerned. But what are those flavours, exactly? Some years back, WINE magazine quoted an unnamed American foodie as saying that “an oyster will taste the way the taster expects”. If you expect it to be salty and slimy, that’s precisely what you’ll get (no doubt with a dash of Tabasco to burn away the experience as fast as possible).

“Oysters just taste like seawater,” say many – and, to be sure, there is an initial rush of salinity from the liquid in which the oyster bathes in its shell. But bite into the flesh – almost crisp as it gives way to your teeth, a bit like a ripe plum – and the sensation is one of buttery, nutty, meaty sweetness. And then there’s the lingering aftertaste, which can range from cucumber and melon to copper and smoke…

Don’t be ridiculous, you might say. An oyster tastes like an oyster. But that’s the same as saying that wine tastes like fermented grape juice. You’re not wrong, but you’re pretty far off the mark too.
To start with, over 400 species of oysters have been identified. Along South Africa’s coastline, the most common wild (edible) oysters are Crassostrea margaritacea, the common rock oyster found from the Transkei southwards to False Bay; Saccostrea cuccullata, which occurs from the Transkei northwards; and Ostrea atherstoni, the very full-flavoured red oyster found from Algoa Bay to False Bay and up the west coast. “Wild oysters are wonderful when you fetch them from the rocks yourself,” says purveyor of fine foods Sue Baker of Wild Peacock in Stellenbosch. “But they can vary in size so dramatically that buying them is like digging into a lucky packet – you don’t really know what you are getting!”

For this reason, you’ll mostly be served the cultivated Crassostrea gigas or Pacific oyster – indigenous to Japan and Korea, grown from “spats” (baby oysters) imported from France or Chile, and the cultivated oyster of choice worldwide because of its hardiness, relatively fast growth and good meat to whole-weight ratio.

You don’t need to worry too much about species, though. It’s far easier – and in fact more appropriate – to refer to where the oysters come from because their taste is markedly influenced by the water in which they grow (hardly surprising, considering they filter 240 litres a day!). Never mind the Belons and Marennes of France, the Colchesters and Whitstables of England, the Blue Points and Virginias of America – there are differences between our very own Knysna (east coast) and Saldanha (west coast) oysters, and even between Saldanha and other west coast oysters (including those from Lüderitz, Walvis Bay and Swakopmund in Namibia).

Generally speaking, west coast oysters are “fuller” than east coast oysters. “The west coast has the Benguela eco-system, which is very rich in fighter plankton,” explains marine biologist Tony Tonin, the owner of Striker Fisheries (trading as Big Bay Farms) in Saldanha. “This gives us very rich, creamy, fleshy oysters, whereas Knysna’s are much leaner.”

Martyn Hill, general manager of the Knysna Oyster Company, agrees: “The cultivated Knysna oyster is lean and crisp, and it has a distinctive nutty undertone from feeding on the decomposed foliage from upstream.”

The other major influence on flavour and appearance is season (or, more specifically, water temperature). In autumn, when the water gets colder, oysters eat as much food as they can, storing it as glycogen – the starch which gives them their “sweet” taste – to fuel them during winter when they are dormant. For this reason, they are firm and fat in early winter, slowly getting thinner as they live off their reserves. In spring they feed again, but this time they store the food as fat, which gives them a buttery richness for a brief time before being converted into a bland, gelatinous mass of sperm or eggs. (Suffice to say that some people like spawny oysters, others don’t…)

“Along the west coast, the water is so cold that oysters only spawn once a year, and sometimes not at all, so they’re able to build up a really good condition,” says Tonin. In the warmer waters along the east coast, spawning is sparked off more often, plus a more constant supply of plankton means the oysters don’t need to go on a pre-winter binge and accordingly never get as plump as cold-water oysters in autumn.
From region to region, season to season, the more you taste oysters, the more obvious the differences become. “I would even go so far as to say it depends on individual farmers,” says Baker. But it’s not just your palate which is stimulated. Like drinking fine wine, eating oysters inspires contemplation and discussion, and both have an almost Zen or awareness-raising element of ritual about them.

In wine, it’s the extraction of the cork, the quick sniff to establish condition, the decanting, the pouring, the toast and, finally, the sipping, swirling and swallowing. In oysters, it’s the tapping of closed shells to establish freshness, the shucking, the anointing with sauces (or furious refusal to do so by purists), the lifting and rotating of the shells to fi nd the best “sipping lip”, the drinking of the juice before, during or after, and the return of down-turned shells to the plate. In both cases, all your senses – touch, sight, smell and taste – become sharper. You are fully engaged in the experience, as opposed to absentmindedly guzzling beer and crisps while watching rugby.

If wine is a “living” product – evolving in the bottle, at risk of bacterial spoilage – then how much more alive are oysters, which put up a fi ght when you prise open their shells, wince if you add a squeeze of lemon juice, and carry enough of a health risk factor that children, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems should avoid them?

There’s something a little dangerous, almost primal, about eating oysters that – once you’re hooked – starts to make most other food seem over-processed and dead. Woody Allen can have it.