S'moysters

happy new year, clowneroos

Happy New Year, clowns!

I hope all of you had a good holiday together, even if it was smaller than usual (again). Davida and I had a great holiday with her family, though the two of us did come down with a case of sniffles (not the ‘vid - we tested, phew). We are feeling better now, so that’s good.

While we were enjoying our time off, I stumbled upon a picture people were sharing on social media of a very strange concoction. It looks like a 70’s recipe, but these days, people are so good at messing around with Photoshop that I have no idea whether or not it’s actually real.

The dish in the image floating around social media is called a “S’moyster.”

There’s no recipe included, but the image simply shows a standard s’more with an oyster added to it. For those of you international readers who are not familiar with s’mores, a s’more is simply a graham cracker (a sweet cracker) with a piece of chocolate and toasted marshmallow on it.

What gets me is the caption:

It’s not bad!

It’s really not bad: That’s one of the many things your guests will say after trying the s’moyster. Quick and easy - you will be charmed by this creative recipe that turns seafood into a fun new dessert. Impress your guests by serving them a homemade s’moyster.

The fact that the caption says “it’s not bad” two times in a row is what I particularly find interesting. That is not exactly a ringing endorsement. You’re trying to convince people to put an oyster in a dessert that contains chocolate and marshmallow, and all you can say is that “it’s not bad?” We live in a very interesting world.

It might be a new year, but I’m still your old friend, the greatest food writer in all of history, Dannis Ree.

You know what’s coming.

At least making a S’moyster doesn’t involve much.

It’s just graham crackers, chocolate, marshmallow, and oysters. Four whole ingredients, with barely any cooking involved.

I don’t eat graham crackers very often, since they’re kind of boring, and they’re boring by design.

Did you know that graham crackers were invented in part to discourage people from masturbating? They’re called graham crackers because they were invented by a reverend named Sylvester Graham, who wanted people to live a pretty austere life in order to do right by God. Graham encouraged plain diets to discourage people from vices like smoking and…playing with their own junk. I’m not making this up.

This might be the funniest reason why a food was ever invented.

I’m imagining this guy running around, busting through people’s doorways, shouting, “Stop that! I see what you’re doing. Eat this instead. No, seriously, stop. You can’t take these crackers from me if both of your hands are occupied.”

I got some of the other ingredients, like this chocolate bar, from Aldi.

When I picked this up at the store, all I saw were the big letters saying “MILK CHOCOLATE.”

I did not see the tiny letters saying, “…made with real hazelnut spread” until I started fucking around today. Thanks, Aldi.

I decided on canned oysters, which are already cooked, since the social media image showed what appears to be a cooked oyster.

I’m used to finding the smoked ones in oil (we like to snack on those sometimes), but all I could find were some canned oysters in water.

Oysters look like aliens from another planet.

They’re also one of my favorite foods. People say they’re aphrodisiacs, which makes S’moysters even more interesting, considering that graham crackers were designed to have the opposite effect on you.

I ate one. It was pretty good.

Any excuse to whip out my kitchen torch is a good one.

I skewered a marshmallow on a chopstick, which is why chopsticks were invented, and started blazing away, to toast the marshmallow. And no, that’s not a roll of toilet paper in the bottom right corner of the photo, although I do like to roast marshmallows in the bathroom now and then. It’s all about ambiance.

Kitchen torches are terrible for toasting marshmallows since they transform marshmallows directly into a carcinogen.

But they’re fun. That’s probably more important.

After turning a marshmallow into charcoal, I assembled the S’moyster as pictured in the viral image.

Frankly, I did not like what I was seeing. Those gray pallid chunks straight from the can on a carbonized marshmallow, perched on top of chocolate, sounded potentially life-ending.

I grimaced (which is what I always do before eating my own cooking), and took a big bite.

I chewed, staring at the wall. To my absolute dismay, I came to the disturbing realization that the caption with the S’moyster proclaiming, “It isn’t bad!” was 100% correct. In fact, it was fine. The chocolate and burnt marshmallow actually benefited from the presence of the briny and shellfishy oyster flavor, if you can believe it, though the rubbery boiled oyster texture wasn’t exactly an ideal companion. The hazelnut flavor in the milk chocolate was so delicate I barely even noticed it.

Overall, the total combination was so outlandish that it went past revolting back around to “not bad.” I know. I don’t get it either. Would I feed this to a houseguest? Probably, but if I secretly wanted them never to come back.

But…what about a raw oyster?

Chicago isn’t exactly known for its abundance of seafood, so the fact that pre-shucked raw oysters exist is good.

They sell these small containers of oyster meat by the meat and seafood department at our local grocery store. You’re generally advised to cook these things rather than eat them raw, but you read this newsletter. When’s the last time you saw me pay attention to any advice?

Unlike the smoked oysters, however, the raw ones from the jar are fuckin’ huge.

This one was bigger than the spoon I used to fish it out. I put a little cocktail sauce on one and ate the entire thing. It was delicious. I mean, like I said, I love oysters in pretty much any form.

But how about in a S’moyster?

I toasted another marshmallow and prepared another s’more, this time, putting a raw oyster into it. Then I took a big crunchy, melty, and squishy bite, and again, even the raw oyster version wasn’t bad. Weird? Absolutely. No oyster deserves to be in a graham cracker sandwich with melted chocolate and butane-blasted marshmallow. But the flavors are so apart from each other that the nonsense is exactly what made it all work. I know. I’m shaking my head too. It’s all sorts of fucked up.

Davida, who was watching from the other room and not at all interested in participating, asked, “Are you horny from the oysters and chocolate or do the graham crackers cancel that out?”

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As always, I love you all very much, and I’ll hop into some of your inboxes later this week.