Annb
Expert
I have seen a recipe for a beef and oyster pie - at one time the oyster was a kind of filler because they were cheap while beef was expensive. Changed days. Maybe I just don't have very refined taste buds but I can't think of a way I would want to eat them, although when we were young we used to eat cockles quite willingly (sold in little dishes on the seafront in Herne Bay or Folkestone). But we also used to eat shrimps and prawns quite happily but I couldn't now.
Maybe my dislike of them - apart from the taste - has to do with my first sighting of oysters. It was in 1963 and I remember it still. We went to a fish restaurant near the Albert Hall and had a fish meal (what it was I can't remember) and at a table next to us was a very overweight, swarthy gentleman, hands heavily bedecked with rings. He had a dish of oysters in their shells in front of him and he was happily and noisily, slurping them down, hands and rings getting greasier by the oyster. When he finished, his chins and hands were covered in grease, which he wiped off with his napkin but when he stood up to leave we saw that his expensive looking (and expansive) grey suit also had dribbles of oil down the front. Yuk! That was enough to put me off for life, but I did try them that time in Sydney. You're welcome to them Ian. Just as well we're all different, otherwise there wouldn't be enough of anything to go round.