COLUMN
Samuel Pepys mentions oysters in his diaries 68 times, but that was when they were as common as winkles along the banks of the Thames and when they were a source of cheap protein for the masses. That was also before the discharge of London’s effluent killed off the spat. With the disgraceful state of our privately owned water supplies – notably Thames Water and its discharge of raw sewage making headlines on a regular basis – it is surprising any of the knobbly bivalves are left.
But on any day along the shorelines of the Thames Estuary you can spot hand-pickers collecting oysters, breaking them open and squeezing their innards into plastic bottles for the manufacture of oyster sauce.
Personally, I would only swallow an oyster from a reputable fishing company who know and understand the spawning season, the intricate methods of cleaning and preparation for the plate.
Many wonder what all the fuss is about and whether the love of the oyster is really a love of a vehicle for the ingestion of finely diced and vinegarised red onion, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice or Tabasco sauce – or, as in my case, all three.
The best oysters in my view are the wide and flat Colchester and Whitstable natives or the hull-shaped version which is served on dripping trays of ice in Breton restaurants. Yet I know a yachtsman who would gather them up from the muddy shoreline of the River Roach in Essex and fry them with bacon, thereby killing off any dodgy bacteria in sizzling hot vegetable oil.
Is it only an Englishman who could prepare something as delicate as an oyster by frying it to death? But then, equally as Philistine, in my opinion, is to bake them in a pie, recipes for which exist not just in British cookery books, I’m sure.
Only an Englishman could prepare something as delicate as an oyster by frying it to death
All of which brings me to a call for help I received from a group of enthusiasts determined to save Gamecock, the last Whitstable yawl, a beautifully shaped gaffer and the last of her kind to drag an iron oyster ‘drudge’ slowly across the tide to collect oysters in the netting attached.
It is almost certain that a predecessor of Gamecock would have snared the oysters for Pepys’ supper because there have been oyster grounds along the North Kent coast from Reculver to Whitstable since before Roman times. And in Pepys’ day there were hundreds of
