Food

As much as I hate cooking children dinners, I equally love cooking any other kind of food. Mostly because if I'm cooking it means that eating cannot be far behind. Also, when you are busy cooking dinner, you get to farm out the other parenting duties, like bath time. And dirty diapers.

Tonight we're having char-grilled oysters (the adults that is; the kids had fish fingers), inspired by our recent trip to New Orleans and the Acme Oyster House. There is no way I can recreate the exact dish we ate there, but I think this comes close enough, and the scent of melted butter and garlic in the house is enough to make it worth a try. It's even better if you can get someone else to shuck the oysters (I love to delegate.) (No, actually, that's not true. I'm a control freak who is sort-of lazy.)

Char-grilled Oysters
serves 4

2 dozen fresh oysters, shucked, on the half-shell
1 stick (ok fine, 1 and 1/4 sticks) butter  (I KNOW)
3 cloves minced garlic
1 cup grated parmesan or romano (I used a mix of parm and gruyere, because that's what we had)
splash of hot sauce
salt

Melt butter in a saucepan and add minced garlic, salt and hot sauce, lightly cooking the garlic but not allowing it to brown. It should infuse the butter with flavor and will probably make you want to bathe in it. Sprinkle cheese on the oysters, not completely covering them (see photo.) Grill the oysters, and when they start to bubble a little, spoon on some of the butter sauce. Continue cooking until browned around the edges (maybe 3-5 minutes, shell will char.) Spoon on more butter before serving with french bread for dipping.

UPDATE: I allowed 6 oysters per person. This is a gross underestimate. You might want to allow 6 dozen per person. YUM.