Here’s my first recipe for this blog.  It’s simple but tasty.

Oyster Stew

4 tbsp butter
1 qt raw oysters
1 1/2 qts milk
1 1/2 tps salt
few grains pepper

Melt butter in deep saucepan.  Stir until smooth.  Add oysters and oyster liquor; cook over low heat until edges of oysters curl.  Add milk salt and pepper; heat thoroughly but do not boil.
(6 servings)

I’ve never met anyone else whose family embraces this particular tradition but mine.  Every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember and as long as my mother can remember, members of the Fear clan – that’s Mom’s maiden name – have gathered around the table and feasted on oyster stew.  At least in my memory this dinner has also included fancy crackers, fine cheeses and slices of various sausages but the stew is always the star.

I’ve quizzed Mom about this and she doesn’t know where the tradition started.  Putting oysters in milk seems like an Irish sort of thing to me but she said that it came from her father’s family which is German and English.  So I guess we’ll blame the English.

The funny thing about this recipe is that it’s far too simple to survive me.  I can never leave well enough alone.  I’d have to add beef bullion and hot sauce or coconut milk and lemon grass or basil leaves and tomato chunks.  Fortunately for my family the tradition has taken a turn over the last few years that protects the stew from such heretical onslaughts.

It’s easy to imagine that this particular dish, with its warm creamy liquid and grey slimy mollusks, wouldn’t appeal to many raised on an otherwise American diet.  My younger sister never could develop a taste for it although the rest of us did.  So, every Christmas Eve we’d gather eagerly around the pot while Mom ladled out our servings of stew.  (I’d always hope for extra oysters then I’d sit and spoon all of the liquid away so I could savor the oysters.  I still long to lift up the bowl and slurp down the juice to get to them.) 

All of us except Jennifer.  She would hand Mom her bowl and wait for her serving of misery.  Mom knew her plight and would skim off barely a ladleful of liquid – no oysters – which Jennifer still gagged down like it was handfuls of hair.  She just doesn’t like oysters.

But Jennifer’s an adult now and she doesn’t have to clean her plate nor even have some if she doesn’t want it.  But she’s also a sport and, although she hates the stew, she still wants to participate in the tradition.  So her solution, and a perfectly brilliant one I might add, is that she now MAKES the stew.  She never eats any of it but for the last handful of years she’s insisted on hosting our family’s Christmas Eve get-together at which she serves a lovely oyster stew – extra oysters for me, thank you!