I don't like oysters.

In fact, it's probably safe to say that I positively hate them.

Not that I've ever gotten sick from one, but I'm repulsed by the bitter, briny taste of their slimy guts. I can't eat them in any way--deep-fried, cooked with rice, in a hot pot, let alone raw.

So, I don't know why I decided to pick up a tin of smoked oysters at the Tai Nam Food Market yesterday. I was wandering up and down their maze-like aisles filled with exotic food stuffs--like canned shrimp paste, shredded young coconuts meat in syrup, a dozen different rice papers. Then I saw tins of oysters. Some were as is, others were treated: cured, salted, and smoked. Somehow, I wanted one. I didn't know what I would do with it, but before I knew it, the tin was in the basket. I really don't know why.

It couldn't have been the package design, either!

I wandered around some more (actually for an hour or so--the place is a wonderland!), got a Vietnamese lunch box at Ba Le Sandwich Shop on Broadway, had it on the beach, and biked home. Then I had to face the small, nonthreatening-looking tin of oysters. What would I do with it? To make matters worse, Patrick isn't big of oysters, either. I should open the tin and see what it tastes like, I thought, but didn't have the balls to do it. The tin sat on the kitchen counter as I googled "smoked oyster" in the dining area. Having had virtually zero experience with oysters (let alone a good one), I needed some idea of what flavors would go well with the oysters. Someone baked the oysters in its shell with Vietnamese chili sauce, quail eggs and scallions. That sounded good. Someone else baked a flan with smoked oysters and parmesan cheese. That might work, too. Yet another made a pasta with oyster cream sauce. Hmm.

Then the idea struck. A double oyster linguini! I'd picked up a pack of exceptionally perky oyster mushrooms at the same market. I could pair the oysters with oyster mushrooms. Ha. Obviously I was in a rare, bold mood for a dish based purely on a (bad) joke. Cream sauce should work fine with both the oysters and the mushrooms, but I needed something punchy, something that'd stand up against the oysters' strong flavor. Black peppers? Garlic? But they didn't seem to be the one, although I did end up using them in the final product. Further googling didn't yield too many useful suggestions, so I was left to my own devices.

I opened the can and was amused to see its content faithfully mirroring the rather unappetizing graphic on the box. Inside, greenish brown baby oysters about half the size of my thumb were squished against each other in three neat rows. The texture seemed to be very close to that of cooked liver (something else I'm not terribly fond of). Am I being too daring? I wondered. All the recent news of Chinese poisonous products--food or not--started circling around in my head. What do I do? For an answer, I stared at the oysters. Look thy enemy in the eye, and thou shall defeat it, right?

The oysters were preserved in cotton seed oil, which bore a yucky green tint from the oyster juice. The oil might contain the strongest flavor of the oysters; something a real oyster lover would treasure, I thought, but since we weren't the most enthusiastic lovers of oysters, I figured I could drain the oil to tame the flavor. I rinsed the oysters with a bit of leftover whiskey, hoping that the whiskey might add some interesting flavor compatible with the oysters, while rinsing off the excess pungency.

The bean-looking thing in the middle is the smoked oyster bit.

Following the usual steps for a cream-based sauce, I made the double-oyster pasta in about fifteen minutes. In the final product, I didn't taste much of the whiskey, but rinsing part seemed to have worked pretty well; the oysters had become surprisingly edible. There was a hint of their oceanic and bitter flavor, but it was tame enough that we, the two oyster haters, could actually enjoy the sauce infused with oysters. The smoky note, which became the primary flavor, also helped tame the wild oysters for us. We surprised ourselves that we could actually enjoy oysters, but there was room for improvement. There was something lacking in the pasta. I thought something more spicy--like crushed chili pepper or even curry powder--might liven up the complex but somewhat flat sauce. Patrick thought more cream might be good. Writing this now, I wonder something even crazier--like cherry--might work with them or not. Though my first experiment wasn't a success to be announced with fanfare, I'm definitely going to play with this cheap ingredient more. (A tin costs about $1.50.) When winter comes, I might try Patrick's other suggestion: a seafood chowder with the smoked oysters added to the base as a smooth purée.

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Tai Nam Food Market
4925 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL