The Best Dressed Oysters in Town - Irish Atlantic Oysters

I first fell in love with oysters on a beach in Cancale in France where the oysters were brought in from their beds only a few yards from the shore to the shacks selling them by the coast.  They were so fresh filling your mouth with sensations of sea, sun and saltwater.

Fast forward to now and I will order oysters whenever I get a chance.  I was therefore no hardship for me to attend The Best Dressed Oyster event at Hix Oyster and Chop House in London at an event put on by Bord Bia the Irish Food Board.

Champagne was flowing,

and oysters by the dozens,

kept us busy whilst 10 chefs competed across two heats and in two categories - hot and cold oysters basing their recipes on creativity, working methods, hygiene, presentation, taste and flavours.

The guests had the pleasure of sampling all of the entries which was no hardship whatsoever!  The overall winner in both categories (hot and cold oysters) was Simon Lamont from Shuck

who blew the judges away

with his Blown Seaweed, an oyster grilled with a blowtorch gently sweetened with mustard and miso and balanced by clean, tart ginger.

Here are a few photos of the amazing variety of oyster dishes created by the contestants:-

And my favourite - a deep fried oyster in tempura batter

Now for some oyster facts:-
* Irish oyster cultivation dates back to the 13th century but Irish people have been eating oysters for over 4,000 years - discarded oyster shell fossils have been found on Irish beaches dating back 5000 !

* Irish oysters can be found in the finest restaurants and fish wholesales throughout Ireland, Europe and around the world.

* Casanove, the great 18th century Italian lover believed in starting the day by eating 50 oysters.

* Only about 1 in 10,000 oysters contains a pearl! That's a lot of oysters to eat!!

My favourite way to eat oysters is simply as they come with a good squeeze of lemon juice and of course a glass of champagne in the other hand!

I was a guest of Hix Oyster and Chop House and Bord Bia. I was not required to write a positive review of the event.  All opinions and photos are my own.  No photographs may be reproduced without my written permission.

British Tabasco Oyster Opening Championships

How many times do you find yourself saying “no thanks, I’ve had enough” to champagne or oysters.  I don’t say this often, however, attending the recent Tabasco British Oyster Opening Championships I found myself in this enviable position.

This year there were 11 candidates, happily two of them were women and although neither of the women won it was great to see us women represented. Each contestant had 30 oysters to open in timed trials and of course we had the hard job of eating them.The winner of the competition goes on to compete in the next leg, the finals in Ireland.

There was plenty of Tabasco original sauce to sprinkle liberally onto your oysters – they don’t taste right without it.

My friend Val tasted  her first ever oyster and she loved it!

I am a great fan of Tabasco which is weird because for years I had one solitary bottle in the fridge and didn’t often use it.  Since I have been blogging and working with TabascoUK , I now add one of the four in the range to whatever I am cooking.  I even have a tiny bottle to take with me on my travels! My favourite is the Smoked Chipotle which I get through at a really fast rate and in fact if I haven’t used any I say the food is very bland!

Many thanks to Tabasco for the oysters and fun and to Pommery for all the lovely bubbly to wash them down!

What food do you sprinkle Tabasco on? Leave me a blog comment below and let me know. Keep reading the blog to see what else I get up to with my bottle of Tabasco pepper sauce.