Presenting a new series of blogs from your friendly Fishmongers at Central Market Fort Worth: Fish Tales!  We hope to bring you intriguing stories and facts about all types of seafood, including history, fish facts, sustainability information, serving ideas, and even some science!  For our first Fish Tale, we're focusing not on a fish, but on a shellfish – the elegant oyster.  In addition to these blogs, we've got our GO COASTAL seafood event coming up July 21 through August 3 – be sure to swim in for that!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF OYSTERS

• Oyster appeared during the Triassic period some 200 million years ago, and have been an important food since the Neolithic period.  Oysters were cultivated long before the Christian era.

• The ancient Chinese raised oysters artificially in ponds.  In 320 B.C., Aristotle made a stab at how they generated, writing in Historia Animalium that oysters “came forth from slime via a process of spontaneous generation.”

• Best known for their reputed aphrodisiac powers, oysters have been a favorite of food lovers throughout the centuries, beginning with the Roman emperors who paid for them by their weight in gold.

• Oysters have always been linked with love.  When Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, sprang forth from the sea on an oyster shell and promptly gave birth to Eros, the word “aphrodisiac” was born.  The dashing lover Casanova was said to start a meal with a dozen oysters.

OYSTER FLAVOR PROFILES

It is in the warmest waters (East and Gulf Coasts) where that muscle is most put to work.  As a result of all that exercise, oysters there tend to be the leanest in meatiness, and have less of that creamy, fruity taste savored by true-blue oyster lovers.  In the coldest waters (Western coasts of Canada and the American Northwest) oysters live a more contented life, working that muscle much less and thereby developing a plumper, juicier, fruitier taste mingling with more distinctively briny, flinty flavors.

Northeast Coast ("Skinny") Oysters – Northeast coastal oysters tend to have a longer shaped shell, are leaner in meatiness, yet still retain a moderately briny, salty, steely flavor.  They are delicious for eating raw or with no more than a squeeze of lemon or splash of mignonette (a white wine vinegar/shallot dip).  In restaurants and markets, these oysters are commonly sold by their points of origin, such as Long Islands (the original Bluepoints), Wellfleets (Cape Cod), Delawares and Bristols (Maine).  Similar to these are the oysters off Eastern Canada, also sold by location names such as "Novys" (Nova Scotia), Malpeques (Prince Edward Island) and Caraquets (New Brunswick).

Northwest Coast ("Fat") Oysters – The waters off the Northwest coasts of Canada and the U.S. are an oyster lover's paradise, giving the broadest, roundest, fruitiest, fleshiest and creamiest textured of bivalves.  These variations of the Pacific oyster are also usually sold by their location names, such as Hama Hamas, Quilcenes, Hood Canals, Pearl Bays, Caraquets, Chef Creeks, Sinkus and the biggest of all, Tottens (literally a three or four bite oyster).

Olympia & Kumamoto ("Small") Oysters – Olympia oysters are the Pacific Northwest's only native variety, small, mild, yet meaty, almost lushly flavorful.  Then there is the unique sub-species of Pacific oyster which originated from Japan, but are now farm raised in Washington State and Northern California: the dinky but pillowy plump, sweet, succulent, wildly popular Kumamotos.