Oyster soup recipe

[In Memory of Vicroy]

Me & the Bride drove down to New Orleans Monday to celebrate (a little late) our 45th anniversary. Ate dinner at Tommy's on Choppa-Two-Lass St. Maybe the best food we have ever had in the city, which is saying a lot. Sort of creole-italian...nothing fancy, mostly old reliable dishes, but the best....for example, the turtle soup is absolutely the best I've ever had, period.

So we stayed at the Royal Orleans in the Quarter - where we spent our honeymoon - and ate breakfast yesterday at Brennan's. Now Brennan's remains one of our favorite places in the city, just something about having a milk punch at 9 am, then their oyster soup, then Eggs Hussard, and flaming Bananas Foster for dessert puts you in the right frame of mind.

Did someone say oyster soup? Theirs is outstanding, and somewhat differnt from your conventional cream based oyster soup. They publish a recipe for it, but I promise you that recipe is not what they serve.

Our son Capt. Brent brought his old Pop a sack of real fine oysters today and I decided to see if I could duplicate the Brennans's "secret" oyster soup recipe. I pretty much have done it, its still simmering down but is gonna make the cut.

Here's how, for 4 people:

Melt a stick of real salted butter in a dutch oven, then saute' a cup of finely chopped green onions, a cup of finely chopped celery, and a head of finely chopped garlic over medium heat until soft, but not browned. Takes me about 15 minutes and stir frequently. Now sprinkle in a heaping tablespoon of flour and reduce the heat to low and continue to saue with the flour for 5 more minutes, sitrring consantly.

Take two dozen large (or 3 doz. small-ish) shucked oysters and save the juice. You want to end up with about 5 cups of oyster juice and you can make more by putting the shucked oysters in a collendar and running a little water over them with a bowl underneath to catch the juice, called oyster likker. I also used some chicken stock to make up the required amount.

Now for the trick they don't tell you - take your food processor and chop the oysters...yep, chop 'em up pretty fine. Now slowly pour the chopped oysters and likker into the dutch oven and bring it to a slow boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Let it cook down (in chef talk: "reduce") about 25% or so. May have to simmer, uncovered, for an hour or two to get right. Keep tasting it as it cooks down and when it starts to thicken its getting close. You can add corn starch to thicken it up, but I prefer to just cook it down.

Good stuff.

UV

[Rocky]

Sounds like another one for the UV Bertram31 cookbook,
Keep'm coming !!

[Mikey]

Last year at our Club's annual meeting I did a UV oyster saute with two pints of oysters. Not the only hors deouvres so I thought that would be plenty. Rave reviews. Shortly after I was asked to publish the recipe in our newsletter. I did so knowing that not many had the patience to stand over the stove (even with the requisite martini) and sloooowly saute the veggies. So last Friday did it again for the same occasion with two quarts of oysters this time. Same rave reviews.
Still not enough.
Getting damned expensive, but what the hell, I'll just pi## the $$ away on something important like . . .
Can't think of anything more important.

[In Memory of Vicroy]

Rocky, it really turned out good.....me & the Bride ate almost all of it last night. So the "for 4" might be a little short. You can easily double the recipe, just get a bigger pot. The trick is to really cook it down slowly....the body and taste start off kinda weak then as it cooks down suddenly explodes. No kiddin'.

UV

[Rocky]

Boy, do I ever need to convert my vegetarian wife over so we can enjoy this stuff together!