 Oysters,
served with a crème fraîche mixture and here with an Oregon sparkling
wine embody the elegant side of the state's cuisine. |
Oysters With Crème Fraîche, Lemon And Tarragon
Cooking in the Pacific Northwest has always been about ingredients—and not too fancy, please. James Beard, who grew up in Portland, wrote extensively about craving Oregon's razor clams, crabs, vegetables and berries even when he was traveling in France. Throughout his life, the food guru returned to Oregon regularly, eventually setting up a summer cooking school on the coast, the better to revel in the state's bounty.
Cory Schreiber taps into the same sensibilities with the food he serves at Wildwood, his eleven-year-old Portland restaurant. And he has something Beard did not: a thriving local wine industry to complete the picture at the table.
Schreiber's family has been in the restaurant business in Oregon for nearly 130 years, but he earned his toque cooking in Boston, Chicago and ultimately as chef of the Cypress Club in San Francisco. There he served complex dishes that fit with the restaurant's outré style. But when he returned to Portland, he discovered that he had to scale back and make the food simpler.
In his cookbook, Wildwood: Cooking From the Source in the Pacific Northwest (Ten Speed Press, 2000), Schreiber offers recipes from his family's other establishments (The Oregon Oyster Company, Dan & Louis' Oyster Bar) as well as those for some of the more creative dishes he is doing now, including the ones in this menu.
The recipe featured here takes a different approach to cooked oysters. Rather than topping a raw, open-faced oyster with a sauce and running it under a broiler, as in oysters Rockefeller, Schreiber simply broils the unopened oysters until they relax and open a little in the heat. This makes the oysters easy to open, and it heats them without overcooking them.
This dish is perfect with sparkling wine and Argyle Brut Willamette Valley matches seamlessly with the oysters.
Oysters With Crème Fraîche,
Lemon and Tarragon 
• 1/2 cup crème fraîche or sour cream
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh tarragon
• Grated zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons Pernod, simmered to reduce in volume to 1 teaspoon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons undiluted orange juice concentrate
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Dash of cayenne pepper
• Kosher or rock salt (for layering)
• 16 large oysters
Preheat the broiler. In a mixing bowl, using an electric mixer on medium-high
speed, beat the crème fraîche or sour cream until soft peaks form. Stir
in the tarragon, lemon zest, orange juice concentrate, Pernod, salt
and cayenne. Set aside.
In a shallow baking pan, layer the kosher or rock salt 1/4 inch thick. Gently press the oyster shells into the salt to hold them in place. Broil the oysters 6 inches from the heat source for 4 to 5 minutes, or just until they begin to release their juices and the shells pop open slightly. Remove from the broiler and remove the top oyster shells by inserting a butter knife and popping the shells off. Top each oyster with a spoonful of crème fraîche mixture and serve immediately.
Serves 4.