The opened thing (meal opening, festive)

Bouzigues oysters with mignonnette

Name: Bouzigues oysters with mignonnette
Total time: 30 min
Ingredients: Bouzigues oysters (or Thau rock oysters) — 24 pieces (size 3); Red wine vinegar — 4 tbsp; Grey shallot, finely chopped — 1 large; Black pepper from the mill — a few turns; Lemon — 1, cut into wedges; Rye bread + demi-salt butter — 6 slices

FestiveDocumented🧂 🍄 🍋moyen30 min

Bouzigues oysters served live on a bed of ice, accompanied by a mignonnette of vinegar and shallot, a lemon wedge, and buttered rye bread. The closed thing that you open with a knife to find a whole firmament inside.

The opened thing (meal opening, festive)

See this thing: a pebble rougher than any other, obstinately closed. You have to try several times to open it, and you often cut your fingers — the shells from the Thau lagoon do not surrender without a fight. But once forced, what a sky inside: a greenish pool, a sachet of mother-of-pearl, and that taste of salt water which is the sea itself, reduced to a mouthful. I only add a dash of shallot vinegar, never more: you do not correct something so right.
— Francis Ponge

Ingredients

•Bouzigues oysters (Thau lagoon) — two dozen (the main thing)
•Wine vinegar — a little (mignonnette)
•Grey shallot — one (mignonnette)
•Lemon — one (acidity)
•Rye bread and butter — as needed (accompaniment)

How it was made : Oysters were eaten raw and alive, opened at the last minute. On the Languedoc coast, oysters from the Thau lagoon (Bouzigues, Mèze) have been rope-grown since the early 20th century; in Ponge's time, they were simply consumed with vinegar or lemon, without fuss.

Sources : Francis Ponge, « L'Huître », dans Le Parti pris des choses, Gallimard, 1942 · J.-B. Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, 1897