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Oysters a L'Indienne
1 pint oysters Bacon Cloves 2 tablespoons chutney sauce 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon minced parsley 6 olives 1/2 teaspoon paprika Drain large oysters, wipe them dry, wrap each in a slice of bacon, fastened with a toothpick, and stick two cloves in each oyster. Put the oysters in the blazer and cook until the bacon is crisp and the oysters plump. Mix the chutney sauce, Worcestershire sauce, minced parsley, olives cut fine, and paprika. Pour over the oysters, stirring it thoroughly into the gravy. This recipe will serve three or four.
A chafing-dish recipe from the era when the dish was cooked in front of the guests. Everything hinges on the bacon and the oysters finishing at the same moment, which they will not do unless you help them.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, set either directly over the flame or over its hot-water bath. Over direct heat it behaves like a thin skillet; a heavy 10-inch frying pan is the closest modern substitute.
- Bacon timingModern bacon needs 8 to 10 minutes to crisp, by which time the oysters will have shrunk and toughened. Partly cook the bacon first, until it has rendered but is still pliable, then wrap and finish in the pan for two or three minutes until the oysters plump and their edges ruffle.
- Two cloves per oysterWhole cloves are far more assertive than most palates now expect, and they are not meant to be eaten. Count them out as you go and fish them out before serving, or push them into the bacon rather than the oyster.
- Chutney sauceThis almost certainly means a bottled sweet-and-sour fruit chutney of the kind then sold for the table, rather than a fresh herb chutney. Chop it fine if it is chunky, as the whole mixture is used as a pour-over sauce.
- OlivesProbably green olives, possibly pimiento-stuffed. Six chopped olives plus two tablespoons of Worcestershire is a salty combination, and the recipe calls for no added salt.
- The gravyThe "gravy" is simply the bacon fat and oyster liquor left in the pan. Pour off excess fat before adding the sauce mixture or it will not cling to the oysters.
- Quantity and servingA pint of shucked oysters runs to roughly a dozen to twenty, fewer if they are the large ones the recipe asks for. The recipe itself says it serves three or four; it works as a hot appetizer.