A beautiful pile of Choptank Sweets oysters. Photo by Gary Reich OK, so it was technically oyster season September 1, but it’s always around the beginning of December when the Bay’s treasured bivalve ramps up in popularity as the season for blue crabs and crab meat season shuts down for the year. And while many certainly hate saying goodbye to newspaper covered tables piled high with Old Bay spiced hard shell crabs, oyster season in Bay Country always is a reason to celebrate. And PropTalk is always looking for an excuse to cook something. After having a most-excellent rendition of oysters Rockefeller this weekend at a fine local restaurant (Paul’s Homewood Café in Annapolis), we decided to dig up some history about the dish and see if we could pull it off ourselves. According to many online sources, oysters Rockefeller was created at a restaurant named Antoine’s in New Orleans, LA. The rich and hearty dish was named after John D. Rockefeller, who was the wealthiest American alive at the time… for the richness of the sauce. Antoine’s was founded in 1840 by Antoine Alciatore and is still in operation within New Orleans’ French Quarter today. Many say that Antoine’s original recipe is only know by a small group of people, and any version prepared outside of the restaurant’s kitchen can’t be completely authentic.

But the basic premise of the dish is fairly consistent—a puree of spinach, parsley, scallions, Herbsaint (an anise liqueur), and butter spread over freshly shucked oysters that are baked in their shells. Sounds good to us.

We stopped by our local seafood market and picked up a dozen of the prettiest Choptank Sweets oysters (a wonderful farmed oyster from the Eastern Shore) we’ve ever seen. The oysters are about where the consistency to the original recipe ended. We also picked up spinach, bacon, parmesan and a bottle of Pernod to substitute for the Herbsaint. After we’d sautéed all of the ingredients in butter, we let the mixture cool in the fridge, and then spooned a good dollop on each critter before topping with cheese and cooking in the oven for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. We think we did OK, but our oysters were, believe it or not, too big. We recommend using small oysters for the dish.

Send your favorite oyster recipes and pictures to [email protected]

Oysters Rockefeller- A photo log

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