Doane’s Pan Roast 
(Courtesy of Olympia Oyster House) 
1 pint shucked oysters 
2 tablespoons butter 
3-4 tablespoons ketchup 
Pepper 
Toasted bread 
1. Wash oysters well. 
2. Put in a pan and let come to a 
simmer. Immediately add butter, 
ketchup, and pepper. Stir gently 
and serve on toasted bread as soon 
as butter melts. 
Yield: Two servings 
Lila Gault’s Northwest Oyster Stew 
(Adapted from The Northwest 
Cookbook ; Quick Fox, Inc.) 
pany opens only three to four bushels 
a week and didn’t happen to have 
any in stock when I passed through. 
But the Skookum Bay Oyster Com- 
pany, a family operation located on 
a small bay in the hinterland of Shel- 
ton, Washington, at the end of a dirt 
road, is in its gray way a landmark 
of contemporary American gastron- 
omy. It processes Olympias with reg- 
ularity. 
Outside the company’s weathered 
building, you notice a derelict boat 
and big piles of oyster shells. Some 
of those piles are made of tiny, ir- 
regular, purple-tinted shells, which 
thousands of Olympias once lived in. 
Inside, John Blanton supervises his 
little factory. In the first work area 
one comes to, a woman jabs at humon- 
gous Pacifies, flipping them out of 
their shells like great pale tongues. 
In back, Blanton’s grown daughter 
Donna works more delicately, with a 
scaled-down oyster knife especially 
modified for Olys. Donna can open 
roughly 4,000 of them on an average 
day, about two gallons of shucked Olys 
altogether. Her brother culls the day’s 
load of mud- and shell-filled pickings 
from the family’s Olympia beds. He 
passes a small number of harvestable 
oysters on to his sister. 
The scene is not quite as romantic 
as the floating world of Oyster Bay 
that Cora Chase describes. But the 
Blantons are certainly in the same tra- 
dition. 
Donna let me fumble with her knife 
until I got an oyster open. Straight- 
away, I sucked the thumbnail-sized 
mollusk out of its shell. 
The taste was sharply marine but 
also refined, and in no way did it 
remind me of copper. I confirmed this 
judgment some hours later at the place 
where Dungeness Spit arcs out in a 
thin ray of sand for miles into the 
Strait of Juan de Fuca. Sitting on 
driftwood in the perpetual drizzle, I 
devoured thirty or more shucked Olys, 
feeling favored but wondering why tra- 
dition-crazed Westerners and the 
Northwest Coast’s rabid environmen- 
talists haven’t put their money as well 
as their mouths behind the preserva- 
tion and encouragement of a unique, 
vanishing, and most toothsome native 
bivalve. If we are finally ready as a 
nation for the small car, why not also 
insist on our right to the small oyster? 
Raymond Sokolov, a writer with an 
interest in the history and preparation 
of food, is editor of Book Digest. 
1 pint shucked oysters 
1 cup heavy cream 
3 cups milk 
1 teaspoon salt 
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 
Cayenne 
2 tablespoons butter 
Chopped parsley 
1 . In a large Dutch oven, simmer oys- 
ters in their liquor over low heat 
for about three minutes or until 
the edges begin to curl. Add cream 
and milk, and heat until bubbles 
form around edge of pot, but not 
until boiling. 
2. Add salt, Worcestershire, and cay- 
enne in small amounts to taste. 
3. Remove from heat and add butter. 
Garnish with chopped parsley. 
Yield: Four servings 
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