The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.57 (846 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0345476387 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-08-20 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Delicious history Addison Phillips BIG OYSTER is Kurlansky's latest food-themed history (following his previous COD and SALT). It differs from his previous books in several ways, but still serves up a tasty morsel.Although the title and cover suggest that the book is about oysters, it's actually a history of New York city--the choices and, in particular, the (hindsight-only) mistakes in handling the environment that transformed Manhattan island and its surroundings from pastoral beauty to modern Gotham. Today, New York is. "Who knew?" according to Michael H. Jones. First off, I am a chefso my five-star rating might be taken with a grain of sea salt. Also, I am a chef from New York Citywho still opens a couple of hundred oysters a week.I learned bunches from Mark's book. I was able to justify a long held stance about storing oysters in the face of superstition from my twenty-something rock-star staff.I owned a restaurant in Telluride, Colorado back in the 70's. We dug around in the basement and found menus from the 1890's that featured fresh New Yor. Shuck this oyster for a good treat Richard Dicanio "O oysters" said the carpenter,"you've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?"But answer came there none-And this was scarcely odd,because They'd eaten every one.'Such was Tweedledum and Tweedledees discourse to Alice in Carrolls' well known work.They'd eaten every one, ah yes; a common lament of oyster lovers everywhere because the once abundant stock in New York waters are essentially gone forever.The Big Oyster, a work of enormity with regard to the tiny creatures histor
When the Dutch arrived, the estuary of the lower Hudson, with its rich confluence of rivers, contained 350 square miles of oyster beds—"fully half of the world's oysters." The huge oyster stores contributed mightily to the mercantile wealth and natural renown of New Amsterdam, then inherited by the British, who were crazy about oysters; pickled oysters became an important trade with British West Indies slave plantations. Kurlansky's history digresses all over the place, and sparkles. The exhaustion of the city's oyster beds and pollution by sewage effectively eclipsed the consumption of local oysters by the 1920s, yet the lowly oyster still promotes the health of the waterways by its natural filtering system as well as indicating the purity of the water. All rights reserved. While cheap, oysters appealed equally to the rich and poor
With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.. Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. Kurlansky brings characters vividly to life while recounting dramatic incidents that changed the course of New York history. Here are the stories behind Peter Stuyvesant’s peg leg and Robert Fulton’s “Folly”; the oyster merchant and pioneering African American leader Thomas Downing; the birth of the business lunch at Delmonico’s; early feminist Fanny Fern, one of the highest-paid newspaper writers in the city; even “Diamond” Jim Brady, who we discover was not the gourmand of popular legend. Now award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster, whose influence on the great metropolis remains unparalleled.For centuries New York was famous for its oysters, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s economy, gastronomy, and ecology that the abundant bivalves were Gotham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for the wealthy, the poor, and tourists alike, and the primary natural defense against pollution for the city’s congested waterways.Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight–along with historic recipes, m