The Oyster Stew Experiment

oyster stew
Originally uploaded by Kit Pollard.

Verdict: Eh

Friday night, after my big, fun food shopping day, I settled in to make a salad and oyster stew. Everything started off innocently enough - I cooked some bacon and peeled an orange for the salad, made a quick citrus-champagne vinaigrette, and took the oysters out of the refrigerator.

That's when things started to go south. The stew recipe is fairly easy, but it's also time-sensitive. Unfortunately, I screwed up the timing. I started to open a bottle of wine at an inopportune moment: just as the stew started simmering. Which was also just when I should've taken the stew off the heat.

In the one minute it took me to open the wine, the stew began to boil and the cream in it separated. Look closely at the picture, you can see the lovely little chunks of white floating on the skin of the stew. Mmmmm. I tried to skim most off, but to no avail.

The stew itself was...unremarkable, actually. Too buttery and too creamy for my taste (and that has to be pretty buttery and creamy.) I ate my oysters and salad and left it at that. Cooper ate all of his, and he liked it, but he didn't love it.

Then I managed to avoid cooking for the rest of the weekend. Tonight: beef stew.