For the past few years, I have greatly enjoyed "participating" in Cornell’s program to bring oysters and other shellfish back to Peconic Bay, the estuary at the eastern end of Long Island between the South Fork (a.k.a. The Hamptons) and its more bucolic neighbor across the water, the North Fork. Decades ago, Peconic Bay was the largest source of bay scallops in the nation, and rail cars lined the docks in Greenport to take the crop as far away as California. Thanks to the university’s Southold Project in Aquaculture Training (SPAT), scallops are making a comeback, but oysters are the bigger success story. It’s a noble cause, tending them every couple of months, especially at this time of the year, which requires rowing out in usually foul weather to make sure they are properly covered for the winter.
That’s where I come in. Around this time, usually the week before Thanksgiving, my friend Warren comes out to the North Fork from Manhattan to close up his beds for the season. I pick him up at the station in Southold and drive him over to the SPAT center on Cedar Beach. I return in a few hours, and we hit the farm stands on the way back to the train. SPAT allows participants to harvest a certain amount of oysters, and Warren always leaves with a sack of them. Aside from the personal satisfaction he derives from helping to replenish the oysters, this limited allotment is his only reward. And mine? A generous gift of two dozen of them, left in a plastic bag on the backseat of my car.
I must confess, the crop for the past two years wasn’t that great. The shells were thin and often split while I was shucking them. In my frenzy to open them, I ended up spilling the wonderful brine all over the sink. But not this year. What a change—what a delightful, miraculous change. I could tell immediately that the shells were larger than before, but I was still surprised when each opened flawlessly—not easily, but flawlessly—without cracking. The meat inside was plump and rested undisturbed in its brine. The hard labor done, they now looked so pretty all neatly arranged on the platter. One guest, a veteran of the last three tastings, stole my thoughts when he said: "They look like something you’d get at a restaurant." They tasted great, too; unlike at most restaurants, my oysters had only been out of the water for a couple of hours.
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