A 120 years ago, my dad was living in Beebe, VT. His father was a conductor on the Boston-Maine railroad, which had a route up through Vermont all the way up to the Canadian border. He lived in a house a few hundred yards off the Canadian border that his great grandfather lived in the 1860s and likely far before that.So my dad used to tell it, his father used to come in every so often with a sack of oysters from some guy in Boston who shipped them up into the interior. Down the block from where he lived was a country store and in it they sold Vermont Common Crackers. The building still stands; just off the border line. The rest of my knowledge is legend.
Enjoy this recipe. It is the one my dad's dad made for him and he could never get enough and probably dates back 200 years or more. I think about him eating this now 23 years long gone and his absolute delight in the taste and mostly I think in the remembrance of his own childhood. And perhaps the last year of his eating life and hopefully not but perhaps the last year of mine, on a New Year's Eve, I think about the possibility of sharing this with him and some fine day yet to come. In any event, if you want to impress someone beyond belief, make this simple dish and you will have a friend for life
Ingredients:
Pint or so of select oysters
Sleeve of saltine crackers (sub for Common Crackers)
Pint of 1/2 and 1/2 or light cream if you dare
Stick of butter
Directions:
- Use a little butter and coat a small baking dish or some small oven proof dish..4x6ish...you know the type.
- Melt the butter and crush the crackers and toss them in the butter over low heat. Coat and lightly roast the crackers.
- Take some of the crackers (butter toasted) and line the bottom of your dish
- Top that layer with oysters and repeat until your run out of oysters (obviously) - reserve the oyster liquor
- Put a light cracker layer on top
- Pour in 1/2&1/2 until it is 1/2 way up the dish more or less...but kinda covers to the top layer of oysters...also use the oyster liquor in this step. Don't add much salt if you use the oyster liquor. Fresh ground pepper to taste.
- Warm in a 375 oven for 30 minutes or so until the liquid is hot enough to make sure the oysters are poached
Serve warm. Get there first or you won't get any. It tastes the same as it did when my dad first made it for me 70 years ago. You can, if you wish, just inject it in your arteries but that skips the step of eating it and enjoying it.