For someone like me with a personality quirk that prevents me from throwing things away, buying expensive things like oysters and crabmeat becomes traumatic.
Before Tom returned to his lifetime habit of eating every meal out, I bought another $30 worth of oysters. These were gorgeous enormous oysters like he loves, and I kept promising an oyster poor boy.
Leidenheiner bread seems now to have a shelf life of only 16 hours, so after a few days of promises we were out of bread.
But Keith Young’s, in addition to its other charms, serves great bread. We took half the loaf home from lunch that day.
Oddly, Tom ordered just a small plate of catfish with seafood stuffed bell pepper, and only ate some of that, so I offered the oyster poor boy that evening. He was very enthusiastic about the idea.
I used the garlic butter from a previous oyster project to butter the bread and toast it. I flipped the massive oysters in egg wash and then gredged them in Bellegarde heirloom cornmeal, which was milled so fine it practically had the texture of cornstarch. This was not enough coating on the oysters so I repeated the process again.
The peanut oil was beautifully clear. I tried it after a chef or two on our Ask The Chef segment recommended that. I never use Canola oil and I've decided coconut oil is annoying. It gets almost black and really stinks at higher temps. The chefs were right. The peanut oil made for a beautiful fried product.
I piled the oysters on the bread with lots of pickles and a slather of mayo, exactly like Tom loves. It made for a huge sandwich, I’ll admit. He ate not even half of it.
The rest of the poor boy went back into the refrigerator.
It seems I just can’t finish off all those oysters.
