Oysters for the Holidays

In France, oysters are served throughout the year in restaurants, but come December they're especially popular at sidewalk stalls (like the one at the left, in Montparnasse) for take-home consumption; with champagne, they're a festive holiday highlight.

Puget Sound is home to some of the best oysters in North America, and local grower Taylor Shellfish is making it easy to serve oysters at home. They're selling a couple of holiday packages: an assortment of two dozen oysters for $35, four dozen for $64. The gift packs come with an oyster knife, shucking instructions, an oyster guide and a copy of Jon Rowley’s Art of Eating an Oyster.

What to drink with oysters? Aha! Find out at the official site of the Oyster Wine Competition.

Taylor is is a fourth generation, family-owned company; if you've had Manila clams or Mediterranean mussels in a Seattle restaurants, chances are pretty good they were delivered by Taylor. Tried their geoduck yet? (Rowley says it's the next big thing.) Meantime, Taylor is supplying Olympia, Kumamoto, Pacific, European Flat and Virginica oysters for the local "half shell" trade, as well as shucked and frozen oysters to more distant markets. More about the specific oyster varieties below.

OYSTER PROFILES:

Olympia Ostrea lurida: Popular during the Califronia Gold Rush. Only as big as a fifty cent piece. Sweet, coppery flavor and a coppery finish. We like "Olys" taken cold, glistening and uncompromised, directly from their shells with a dry, crisp, clean-finishing white wine.

Kumamoto Crassostrea sikamea: Small deep cup, sculptured, fluted shell, uniform size and shape with clean, sweet, nutty flavor. 2 inch shell. The sweetheart of the half shell trade.

Totten Inlet Pacific Crassostrea gigas: Nicely cupped 3 inch shell with pronounced flutes. Shell color varies from whitish-grey to greenish to brown to nearly black depending on growing location. Flesh is white to chestnut with grey to black mantles. Plump with fresh, clean, briny-sweet flavor.

Totten Inlet Virginica* Crassostrea virginica: The best tasting oyster in the country. Attractive pear-shaped shell with a somewhat flat top-shell and slightly concave bottom-shell. The meat color is a beige-cream with a thin slightly black or brown-trimmed mantle. The flavor combines a clean, briny, smooth sweetness with a pronounced mineral finish. 3.25 to 3.5 inch shell.

*Placed 1st in flavor at the East Coast Shellfish Growers 1st Annual Invitational Oyster Challenge

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