August 18 – August 24, 2025

Monday:                              Barbecued Chicken Salad / Tomato and Peach  Caprese Salad

Tuesday:                              Meatballs with Grilled Bread and Salad

Wednesday:                      Pasta Putanesca

Thursday:                            Dunnings Dinner

Friday:                                  Crispy Salmon with Avocado Sauce

Saturday:                            Big Little Summer Tomato Pie

Sunday:                               Shrimp Cocktail / Roasted Oysters with Grilled Bread

I BLAME NEITHER THE WALRUS NOR THE CARPENTER

Lewis Carroll created a hilarious, though creepy portrait of greedy hypocrisy with his poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”*  If you don’t know it, you should look it up and read the entire thing out loud.  If you can read it in the voice of Ed Wynn, it will be perfect, but even if you read it in the voice of Walter Cronkite, you will be laughing.

*Pretending to befriend the oysters, the walrus and the carpenter invite them for a walk on the beach.  Needless to say, the oysters do not survive the stroll.

I think we can agree that neither the walrus nor the carpenter are models of self-control and that neither should be left in charge of the children or the pets.  But to blame the walrus or the carpenter would itself be hypocritical, since I share their taste for oysters.  Give me a plate of raw oysters, a lemon and some horseradish and an excellent wife, a nice house and a good book and I’ll be happy.  If, however, you take away the wife, the house and the book, oysters will make me happy by themselves.

Many of you, I know, agree.  But I’m not sure that all of you have fallen in love with roasted or grilled oysters.  If you have any doubts about the wonders of grilled oysters, please fly to New Orleans, take a cab or Uber to the New Orleans Hilton, grab a seat at the bar at Drago’s restaurant and order a plateful of grilled oysters.

While you’re waiting for your order, enjoy the banter of the grill chefs (3 or 4 of them manning a flaming grill that is about 25 feet in length), the spouts of flame as they mop the shucked oysters with garlic butter, the smells, the hilarity, the martini you sip while waiting for your order.  You will not be bored.

And the oysters, my God, the oysters, will send you to heaven.

Now, the recipe below, which is for oven-roasted oysters, can’t compare with Drago’s, but it will get you to a very happy place indeed.  Serve it with some good grilled or toasted bread and you will be even happier.  Also, you will have saved the money that that trip to New Orleans would have cost you.  (If, however, you do get to Drago’s at some point, I think you’ll agree that the trip was worth it.)

Oven-Rosted Oysters with Mustard Butter

(adapted from what I remember from an America’s Test Kitchen video)

Timing:                         

If you already have softened butter (takes about an hour out of the fridge) and after you’ve scrubbed the oysters and heated the oven to 400 F, about twenty minutes.

Ingredients:                   

Serves 4 – but infinitely scalable.  Allow 5 oysters per person and, if you roast more than 20 oysters, make another batch of mustard butter and chop some more parsley.

20 oysters – preferably 3 or 4 inches long with a deep cup to hold the oyster liquor.  We prefer briny oysters.

5 Tablespoons softened butter

2 Tablespoons chopped parsley, plus more for serving.

Lemon Wedges and Good Grilled Bread for serving.

Prep:          

Get the butter out an hour before starting the recipe.

Scrub the oysters under cold water to remove sand and grit.  Focus on the seam between the upper and lower shells where sand and grit collect.

Crumple up a sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil large enough to cover a large sheet pan.  Uncrumple the foil and fit into the pan.  The object here is to create a surface that will keep the oysters upright as they open so that no oyster liquor will spill.

Place the oysters on the foil in the pan, making sure that they are horizontally stable.

Cook:

Place the sheet pan in the oven and roast for about 6 minutes – some of the oysters should just be beginning to open.

(While the oysters are in the oven, mix the butter and parsley and mustard together.  Also, heat a grill pan for the bread and brush olive oil on one side of the bread and then sprinkle salt and pepper on the bread.  When the pan is hot, place the bread, oil side down on the grill pan and brush the top of the bread with more oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Toast both sides until golden brown – a little char won’t hurt.)

Leave the oven on and remove the sheet pan and let the oysters cool for about five minutes.  You can now use an oyster knife – don’t forget a dish towel to protect your hands (oysters shells are sharp) – to separate the top (flat) shell from the bottom (cupped) shell.  Be sure to watch a video lesson on how to shuck oysters, if you don’t already know.  Basically, you wiggle the tip of the oyster knife in the joint or hinge (that part of the oyster that does not open) and, once you’ve wiggled into the interior, run it along the top shell to remove.  And don’t forget to run the oyster knife around the muscle holding the oyster meat to the bottom shell.  You must separate the meat from the shell so that your diners can eat the oyster easily.

Now you can divide the butter among the oysters and then put the oysters back in the oven to cook for about 10 minutes or until you get an internal temperature of 160F.  (Oysters are safe to eat raw, but once you begin to warm them, there is a slight chance of them turning – hence the need to reach 140F)

Remove the oysters from the oven, sprinkle the chopped parsley over the oysters and serve with grilled bread and lemon wedges.