Jalapeno Cheese Oysters

We love jalapenos and cheese, so Biz and I thought these were fantastic.  (Thank you, Jay, for introducing us to these!)  You have some freedom with these too; you can use whatever cheeses you like, or you can chop up the jalapenos if you don't want a whole slice on each oyster.  I guess if you really wanted to go the Tex-Mex route, you could skip the cracker and serve on tortilla chips.  Again, we had already baked the oysters in their shell so they would be open enough to shuck, but if you're able to get the shells open without the help of heat, you might want to bake them for longer in the oven when they have cheese on top.

Jalapeno Cheese Oysters

1 dozen oysters, shucked
1/2 cup shredded cheese (we used Cheddar and mozzarella, but you can use whatever you like)
12 jalapeno slices
Crackers for serving

Preheat oven to 400.  Grease small baking dish, and place oysters on the bottom.  Sprinkle oysters with cheese, and top with one jalapeno slice each.  Bake for 6 minutes, or until cheese is melted.  Serve with crackers or tortilla chips. 

Oysters Parmesan

This is a great oyster recipe.  I baked these twice, whether I was supposed to or not--once to get the shell to open to shuck them, and the second time to melt the cheese and mix together all the flavors; it certainly didn't hurt them.  I was later told that I didn't have to scoop them up on a cracker--that I could have just eaten them with a fork--so it works either way.  Again, we steamed them in the shells in the oven for 10 minutes at 400 so that we could shuck them, and then we went from there.  There are very few measurements in this recipe, so you can make it however you like.

Oysters Parmesan

1 dozen oysters
Parmesan cheese
Creole seasoning (Tony Chachere's or something similar)
1/4 cup white wine
Breadcrumbs

Grease bottom of small baking dish, and sprinkle breadcrumbs on the bottom.  Season shucked oysters with creole seasoning, and place on breadcrumbs.  Sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheese and more breadcrumbs.  In bottom of dish, pour white wine until it soaks up breadcrumbs; you may not need the entire 1/4 cup.  Bake in oven at 400 for 6 minutes. 

Roasted Oysters

Consider this Oyster Week on I Hope You're Hungry.  Bizzuck and I had more oysters than we knew what to do with over the weekend, and somehow all of our oyster-eating friends weren't available last night.  We tried them many different ways, and now you get the benefit! 

Normally when we roast oysters, the first thing Biz does is build a very hot fire.  He has a special metal table that he puts over the fire, and then he'll shovel a few dozen oysters in their shells onto the table.  From there, he covers the oysters with sheets of wet burlap, and then sprays the burlap with more water.  After a few minutes, the oyster shells have steamed open, so you can remove the wet burlap to a bucket, shovel the steamed oysters onto a table, and start shucking away.  Like I said, that's normally the way we do it, but of course I didn't take a picture of this when we did it on Saturday.

Sunday was a different story.  We did everything in the oven yesterday; shucking was too difficult without some kind of heat helping us out.  To fix that, we loaded up a baking sheet with as many oysters as possible and loaded them in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes.  From there, shuck them (pop them open by sticking a knife in the opening and prying the two sides apart), scrape the oyster onto a cracker, and put a dab of hot sauce on there. 

They're slimy creatures but very tasty!