Paul Clerehugh is chef and proprietor of London Street Brasserie, Reading, and The Crooked Billet, Stoke Row
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Oysters baked in English Sparkling Wine
By Paul ClerehughJune 24, 2009
Weekly Recipe:
This must be one of the most sensual dishes. A dozen oysters shared with the right companion hopefully making for a sensual experience. Eaten raw, it’s naked, frilled, fleshy, wet rawness.
Slurping a slippery, salty oyster, recumbent and ready inside its glistening pearl-lined cavity is undeniably arousing – so to bake them with a flute of English sparkling wine cannot be surpassed.
- 100g butter
- 200g finely chopped shallots
- 200g finely chopped leeks
- 150ml English sparkling wine
- 150ml cream
- 12 oysters
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Melt the butter in a medium-sized pan and add the shallots and leeks until soft but not coloured. Add the sparkling wine and reduce for two minutes then add the cream and reduce for a further two minutes. Season.
Meanwhile, remove the oysters from their shells, pouring the juice into the cream reduction.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Wash shells and return oysters to their shells.
Sit the oysters in a roasting tin using raw rice/dried beans to make them sit upright. Spoon the creamy reduction over each individual oyster. Bake for five minutes until the oysters are firm and a golden colour and then serve immediately in their shells; accompanied with an elegant flute of sparkling Luxter’s wine.
Paul Clerehugh is chef and proprietor of London Street Brasserie, Reading, and The Crooked Billet, Stoke Row
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