Oysters Mosca

Across the river on the Sunshine Bridge from New Orleans is Mosca's, a little roadside restaurant that can fill your car with the aroma of garlic even if you blow by at sixty. After some experiment over the years, David Earnest and Kathy and I believe we have recreated their signature menu item, a baked oyster dish simply called Oysters Mosca.  Here it is:

Oysters (a dozen per person), shucked, with half their water carefully sieved)

1-1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs

1-1/2 sticks of butter or a combination of butter and olive oil

1 large or two medium onions coarsely chopped

1 cup mushrooms, chopped

3 cloves garlic, more if you like, minced

Parsley, chopped, if available

Juice of ½ lemon

Pepper & salt to taste

Cayenne pepper

Melt the butter and sauté onions until soft, not brown. Then add the garlic and mushrooms and sauté a few minutes more. Add bread crumbs, lemon and oyster water.  A little more moistening might be needed.  Cook for a few minutes and add salt, pepper, parsley, cayenne pepper to taste. Spread the oysters in a single layer on the bottom of a baking dish, cover with the bread crumb mixture, and bake in a 400° pre-heated oven for 10-15 minutes.

Serves 4

     The key to this dish is the amount of moisture. You may like it moist; Mosca's serves it with the oysters just done but the bread crumb mixture dry. But you can't achieve this result by cooking it longer, since that will ruin the oysters. You will have to experiment, and that's the fun. 

Time

I have an electric toothbrush that indicates how long I should continue to brush. It pauses briefly every thirty seconds; then at the end of two minutes its motor stutters to tell me I've done enough. I do this twice a day, and this morning I realized for the first time that every two weeks I'm spending an hour brushing my teeth, or, to put it in a more depressing way, every year I spend an entire day--24 hours--doing nothing but standing in front of a sink with a toothbrush in my mouth. Maybe I should spend less time brushing. Wouldn't regaining half a day be worth two or three more hours in the dentist's chair?
     This train of thought is much too gloomy to pursue. How much time waiting for lights to turn green? Washing coffee cups? Buttoning, unbuttoning, or trying to get the damned bottom parts of the zipper engaged?