Mountain Life: Swan Island Oysters

What do you eat when you are skiing? Chili dogs? We eat fresh Swan Island Oysters. What good luck!

What is it about raw oysters? If you like them you LOVE
them.  It’s like powder skiing, as
the saying goes, “No friends in powder.” Well, there are no friends around the
raw oyster plate, the meek do not inherit the best of the plate, they don’t get
any oysters at all.

Let me count my blessings: our good ski friends Liz &
Mike Moskowitz are oyster farmers. They grow, farm and direct ship the tasty
little morsel known as the Swan Island Oyster.

What good luck! We get the message from Kevin that Mike and
Liz are sending us oysters!

What bad luck! A blizzard hits NY, all flights are grounded
and the Mosks can’t get to Snowbird.

What bad luck! From a planned Wednesday arrival, the word is
that the Mosks can’t get here until Saturday night.

What good luck! The oysters arrive on Thursday. Fedex beats
Delta.

What torture! Do we wait for the Mosks to arrive before we
sample these beauties?

Group vote: No. We don’t wait. They might spoil and that
would be a crime.

What bad luck! We don’t have an oyster knife and although a
screwdriver works, its not the preferred method for other than a desperation
taste.

What good luck! Kevin goes down to our Lodge Bistro
restaurant and cons the chef RJ into ‘lending’ us his oyster knife.

What good luck! Even though Jeff has never really shucked
before, it turns out he’s pretty darn good at shucking. And he gets better and
faster every night.

What good luck! We are eating oysters and watching the snow
fall.

What even better luck! the Mosks arrive and we can finally
have a full-blown Valentine’s Day oyster fest.

A large platter of perfection: briny, juicy, plump, crisp
and just the right size, we have surround sound happy noises. Along with the
inevitable debate on the best way to eat an oyster: with a fork (never!), with
cocktail sauce (never!), slurped straight from the shell (always), with lemon
juice (sometimes), with hot sauce (sometimes) with a shallot and red wine
vinegar migonette sauce (in very small quantity).

   This was followed by a platter of Oyster Rockefeller. No one
makes them better than my Cousin Jim, but I think I did a fair approximation of
his recipe.  This is another one of
those classic dishes that has fallen by the wayside and should be resurrected.

Mountain life can be very, very good! And here's one of our Valentine's Day roses for you to enjoy. Just because the holiday is over, it doesn't mean that we can't still share the love. 

By the way, how do you like to eat oysters??