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Fried Oyster Plants
Cut off the stalks and thoroughly scrape a bunch very fresh oyster plants. Plunge in cold water with a tablespoon vinegar, thoroughly wash and drain. Cut in half, then each half into two. Place in a saucepan with a quart cold water, half a sliced lemon and a teaspoon salt. Cover the pan and let boil for forty minutes. Drain on a sieve, place on a plate, add juice of half a lemon and half teaspoon chopped parsley, mix well in the seasoning and let incorporate for ten minutes. Have a frying batter ready. Take up and roll the oyster plants in the batter and rapidly plunge in boiling fat, one by one, and fry for ten minutes or until a good golden colour. Lift them up with a skimmer, thoroughly drain on a cloth, neatly trim, dress on a hot dish and serve.
Oyster plant is salsify, a long tapering white root sold in winter at farmers' markets and some greengrocers. The recipe is sound, but two of its times belong to a coal range rather than a modern burner and fryer.
- What to buy"Oyster plant" is salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius), the name usually explained by a supposed faint shellfish flavour in the cooked root. Black salsify or scorzonera behaves much the same way and can be substituted. A bunch is roughly 1 to 1.5 lb, which will serve about four as a side.
- The acidulated water is the hingeScraped salsify oxidises to a dull grey within minutes. Have the bowl of cold water and vinegar standing ready before you pick up the peeler, and drop each root in as it is scraped. The half lemon in the cooking water does the same job during boiling.
- Forty minutes is too longThat time assumes thick winter roots on a slow stove. Salsify cut into quarters is usually tender to a knife tip in 15 to 25 minutes. Overcooked, it collapses in the batter and weeps into the fat. Test early.
- Dry it properlyAfter draining and dressing with lemon and parsley, blot the pieces on a towel before battering. Wet salsify will not hold coating, and water in hot fat spits.
- Frying batterNone is specified here; the recipe simply assumes a batter is to hand. A plain one works: 1 cup flour, a pinch of salt, 1 egg and enough beer or cold water to make a coating the thickness of heavy cream.
- Ten minutes in the fat is far too longThe salsify is already cooked through; the fry is only to set and colour the batter. At 350-375F that takes 2 to 3 minutes. Ten minutes would blacken the coating and turn the roots to paste.
- ServingSend it out immediately with lemon wedges. Battered vegetables lose their crispness within a few minutes and do not hold in a warm oven.
Salsify was a standard winter root in European and American kitchens through the nineteenth century, prized precisely because it kept in a cellar and gave a change from turnips and parsnips. The name "oyster plant" or "vegetable oyster" is generally traced to a resemblance in flavour that cooks of the period took quite seriously, and the root turns up in mock-oyster soups and fritters meant to stand in for the real bivalve. Its near-disappearance from markets is often put down to the tedium of scraping it rather than to any failing of taste; the roots are thin, forked and sticky with white latex. Filippini's treatment here, boiled with lemon, dressed with parsley and then battered and deep-fried, is straightforward French vegetable cookery of the sort a hotel kitchen turned out by the tray.