More than once, I have discovered — at my peril — that Valentine’s Day can creep up with very little warning. So this week, I am devoting the Short Cellar to the most romantic meal of all: fresh oysters on the half shell with chilled white wine. It is exotic, an aphrodisiac and surprisingly cheap.
It’s also an easy meal that you can prepare (and consume) virtually anywhere — your kitchen, a dorm room, a hotel, a romantically lit holding cell. You can find some decent instructions for shucking the oyster online, or watch an instructional video. I prefer my oysters with just a drop of lemon juice so their natural flavour is preserved, but you can also garnish them with freshly grated horseradish, chili-sauce or shallot vinegar.
Fresh oysters can be found at restaurants and shops all over Toronto, but some of the best can be nabbed at places like Mike’s Fish Market at the St. Lawrence Market, or from an oyster bar (like Starfish or Oyster Boy). An oyster like the delicious Malpeque goes for around $10-12/dozen at the Market. Unlike a lot of shellfish, oysters can live for a couple weeks in your fridge’s vegetable crisper (layered between damp sheets of newspaper), so don’t be afraid to get them a few days in advance.
What kind of wine matches oysters? That depends on what kind of oysters you’ve selected.
Speaking very broadly, there are two types that you will typically find in Canada: east coast oysters (like Malpeques from PEI) and West coast oysters (like Kumamotos). East coast oysters tend to have a clean, salty and slightly metallic taste. The warmer waters of the West coast, however, usually create a stronger tasting oyster, with definite flavours of cucumber, herbs or tin.
For east coast oysters, I prefer clean, crisp wines with lots of minerality — wines that don’t overwhelm the subtle flavours in the mollusk. Good examples would be the Lenz Moser 2008 Prestige Grüner Veltliner ($12.95 [Ed. note: No longer available], Vintages #71233) — a delightful and refreshing wine from Austria, a country which often produces tremendous value wines. Another good choice would be a bright and steely Chablis like La Chablisienne 2006 Vieilles Vignes Chablis ($24.95, Vintages #942243).
West coast oysters, however, are more vegetal tasting and so they harmonize beautifully with wines that possess a herbaceous character, like Sauvignon Blanc. The Stoneleigh 2009 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc ($17.45, LCBO #293043) has the perfect balance between flavours of grass, lime and luscious fruit — I’ve found it perfectly matches a fat West coaster like a Beach Angel.
They say Casanova ate 50 Oysters every day. Perhaps this Valentine’s Day, it’s time to find out why.
Matthew Sullivan is a civil litigator in Toronto. He blogs weekly here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column also appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca. Follow along on Twitter: @shortcellar.
Photo by Jeffrey Bary