Saturday 5th March 2011

Fête de l’Huître - Le Barcarès

French poet Léon-Paul Fargue described eating oysters as ‘like kissing the sea on the lips.’
For some, oyster tasting is like a Japanese tea ceremony, the opening, lifting and tilting ritual is as much a part of the pleasure as the taste and texture.
For others, the look and the feel is an immediate turn off.
For most, it’s a bit like Marmite; you either love ‘em or hate ‘em.

Whatever your view, an evening at the oyster festival in Le Barcarès, where your oysters will be opened by experts, will give you a chance to enjoy the taste of the essence of the sea involving almost no calories and the possibility of an improved love life… maybe…
Reservations 04 68 86 16 56

In England oysters enjoy a rather risqué reputation: Erotic, exotic, expensive… but here in the P O they are treated rather as they used to be centuries ago in the UK when they were very much the food of the common man. 2000 years ago the Roman set such store by them they imported them from all the coasts of their considerable empire. Now, in France, oysters are party food. And, to our advantage, they are farmed here, they are fresh, they are delicious and, certainly, they are not expensive. Whether or not they are an aphrodisiac is up to you to discover, but, should you want to taste some, the best place to go to lies between Leucate and Barcares. Where the lagoon drains into the sea, well signposted off the D627 is the Centre Conchylicole.

The oysters are raised in the lagoon and brought to the huts that line the channel to be packed and sold. Tanks bubble with water full of oysters, small tables are crowded with people tasting them and sipping crisp white wine. The oysters for “tasting” are served in multiples of 6, small, medium and large; for buying to take away in whatever quantity you need, opened or closed. Either way very few euros buys you a chance to enjoy the taste of the essence of the sea involving almost no calories and the possibility of an improved love life… maybe…

 

Fishy facts about oysters

 

Oysters are low in food energy; one dozen raw oysters contain approximately 110 calories (460 kJ), and are rich in iron, calcium, and vitamin A. The National Heart and Lung Institute suggest oysters as an ideal food for inclusion in low-cholesterol diets.

Four or five medium size oysters supply the recommended daily allowance of iron, copper, iodine, magnesium, calcium, zinc, manganese and phosphorus.

The name oyster is used for a number of different groups of mollusks which grow for the most part in marine or brackish water. Inside a usually highly calcified shell is a soft body. The gills filter plankton from the water. Strong adductor muscles are used to hold the shell closed.

Fresh oysters must be alive just before consumption. They have an extremely short shelf-life, and should be consumed immediately on opening, before which they must be tightly closed; oysters that are already open are dead and must be discarded. To confirm if an open oyster is dead, tap the shell. A live oyster will close and is safe to eat.

Oysters are believed by many to be an aphrodisiac, although the Food and Drug Administration say that the reputed sexual effects of so-called aphrodisiacs are based in folklore, not fact.

An old saying states that oysters are best to eat in months containing the letter R. This is because oysters spawn in the warmer months, from roughly May to August in the Northern Hemisphere, and their flavour, when eaten raw can be watery and bland during spawning season

All oysters can secrete pearls, but those from edible oysters have no market value. Pearl oysters ( or Feathered Oysters) produce pearls by covering an invading piece of grit with nacre (or as most know it, mother-of-pearl). Over the years, the grit is covered with enough nacre to form what we know as a pearl. There are many different types and colours and shapes of pearl, but this depends on the pigment of the nacre and the shape of the piece of grit being covered over.

The tiny crab that one sometimes sees in an oyster is a species of crab (Pinnotheres ostreum) that has evolved to live harmoniously inside an oyster’s shell. They are fairly rare.

There is no way of telling male oysters from females by examining their shells although they do have separate sexes, and may change sex one or more times during their life span.

Oysters breathe much like fish, using both gills and ’mantle’ which is lined with many small, thin-walled blood vessels which extract oxygen from the water and expel carbon dioxide.

The cultivation of oysters began more than 2,000 years ago when Romans collected oyster seed stock near the mouth of the Adriatic Sea and transported them to another part of Italy for grow-out. The Romans had such a passion for oysters that they imported them from all over the Mediterranean and European coasts.
Wikipedia

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