conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled Consider the Oyster about Lewis, Carroll, Mrs with the genre: Cookbooks, Food & Wine, Cooking by Ingredient?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Since Lewis Carroll no one had written charmingly about that indecisively sexed bivalve until Mrs. the author came along with her Consider the Oyster. Surely this will stand for some time as the most judicious treatment in English. Clifton Fadiman
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first three paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Consider the Oyster
  They are, you might say, more like the Southern ladies than the brisk New Englanders. They are delicate and listless...and ice is scarce, or used to be...and the weather's no good for saving; best cover the bayou-molluscs with a fine New Orleans sauce, or at least a dash or two of red Evangeline....
  But further north, men choose their oysters without sauce. They like them cold, straightforward, simple, capable of spirit but unadorned, like a Low Church service maybe or a Boston romance.
  And oysters of the North Atlantic Coast are worthy of this more or less unquestioning trust. They are firm and flavorful, and eaten chilled from their own lower shell with a bit of lemon juice squeezed over them they are among men's true delights.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It says you can fill hollowed-out French or finger rolls with creamed oysters, which you then bake and serve very hot.
  Cut off the top of a crusty loaf of bread, and hollow out the center. Brush with butter, and put into a hot oven to heat through and toast slightly. While this is going on, coat medium-sized oysters with egg and crumbs, and fry them brown in deep or shallow fat. Fill the loaf with the oysters, pour melted butter over them, put on the lid which also has been toasted, and it is ready to eat...or to wrap thickly in wax paper and take on a picnic. A small loaf to serve two people is most convenient for serving.
  For me at least, that recipe is at last the one I have been looking for. I can change it as I will, and even pour a little thick cream over the loaf, or dust it with cayenne, but basically it is right with my childhood dream...and quite probably it is much better than the one the young ladies ate in their stuffy lamp-lit rendezvous so many years ago.
  And yet...yet those will always be, in my mental gastronomy, on my spiritual taste-buds, the most delicious oysters I never ate.
  This is not that, and that certainly is not this, and at the same time an oyster stew is not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, an oyster soup should never be called a stew, nor a stew soup. It is perfectly clear, if you respect oysters and the words about them, and are annoyed by home economics articles, complete with soup recipes, which begin, "Dress up your oyster stew..."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ".
  Cut off the top of a crusty loaf of bread, and hollow out the center. Brush with butter, and put into a hot oven to heat through and toast slightly. While this is going on, coat medium-sized oysters with egg and crumbs, and fry them brown in deep or shallow fat. Fill the loaf with the oysters, pour melted butter over them, put on the lid which also has been toasted, and it is ready to eat...or to wrap thickly in wax paper and take on a picnic. A small loaf to serve two people is most convenient for serving.
  For me at least, that recipe is at last the one I have been looking for. I can change it as I will, and even pour a little thick cream over the loaf, or dust it with cayenne, but basically it is right with my childhood dream...and quite probably it is much better than the one the young ladies ate in their stuffy lamp-lit rendezvous so many years ago.
  And yet...yet those will always be, in my mental gastronomy, on my spiritual taste-buds, the most delicious oysters I never ate.
  This is not that, and that certainly is not this, and at the same time an oyster stew is not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, an oyster soup should never be called a stew, nor a stew soup. It is perfectly clear, if you respect oysters and the words about them, and are annoyed by home economics articles, complete with soup recipes, which begin, "Dress up your oyster stew...It says you can fill hollowed-out French or finger rolls with creamed oysters, which you then bake and serve very hot.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last two paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They pulled off their clothes and swam down through the stilled water, and brought up oysters bigger than their hands, and sat there in the cool fresh grayness of the dawn, cracking open the shells and sucking down the firm fish within. When each little boy had emptied his shells, he dove down for more, and all the hidden fears of the hard night vanished as they ate, and dove, and ate, naked as they were born in the growing light.
  The end of the story was that a bullet plunked into their little cabin wall, because they were stealing oysters from one of the most famous privately owned beds of the most delicious strain of the whole Atlantic Coast. The guard frightened them, and then pitied them and let them go, and they headed into the bay full of the best breakfast they were ever to eat in their lives, wiser but not sadder little boys.