Author Notes
Twenty, twenty, twenty four hours to go…I wanna be sedated. Get me to a clam bar put me on a plane hurry, hurry, hurry before I go insane…
Cocktail sauce? Oh no, Oh no, Oh noooo!
This is a very simple mignonette but potentially lethal for the unsuspecting. I came up with this for a reunion of old college friends where I was blessed to have some expert shuckers on hand. They cranked out dozens of ersters while I worked on the mignonette. One of my friends had never tasted fresh oysters before and was going for a second helping. He was complementing me on the sauce when all of a sudden he experienced the H Bomb effect and his eyes got really, really big. The briny taste of raw shellfish should not be smothered by red glop. And I’ll say no more except that I thought about calling it “Horses on Hatch Covers” in tribute to another food52 recipe I’ve liked.
—pierino
Ingredients
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12
littleneck clams or the same number of really good oysters, such as quilicene or kumamoto
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1 cup
pear vinegar (or substitute good champagne vinegar)
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1
large shallot chopped
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1
heaping tablespoon freshly grated horseradish
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1
teaspoon freshly ground white peppercorns
Directions
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Shuck the oysters and set them out on a tray of crushed ice. They’ll be gone before the ice melts.
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Whisk together the remaining ingredients and pour into a bowl with a small spoon for your guests to top their bivalves with. You might want to warn them about the H Bomb unless you think they might want to relive their bar mitzvah.
Standup commis flâneur, and food historian. Pierino's background is in Italian and Spanish cooking but of late he's focused on frozen desserts. He is now finishing his cookbook, MALAVIDA! Can it get worse? Yes, it can. Visit the Malavida Brass Knuckle cooking page at Facebook and your posts are welcome there.
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