bringing the people behind our food to
life today we are going to do a sirs
Rockefeller the first step to Oysters
Rockefeller is to properly shuck an
oyster to do so you’ll to have a towel
an oyster knife and the oyster every
waster has the top and the bottom the
bottom being the deeper cup now we can
always shuck an oyster like this but
that can be that can be very dangerous
so we will take the oyster hinge out
this is your hinge and cover this with
the towel so that we don’t stab
ourselves place the oyster knife into
the hinge give it a nice turn once you
hear it pop you’ll take the oyster knife
and clear the adductor muscle from the
top turn this oyster round and go from
the bottom clearing that adductor muscle
there as well again hinge bottom down
sometimes they can be they can be a
little difficult so you may have to go
if the hinge is pointing down have to go
up again once you’re in pop let the
knife do the work run it along the top
of the shell slice that adductor muscle
just like so turn it around the adductor
muscle is attached to the bottom and we
will clear there don’t worry if you get
shell you can easily just knock that
shell out you’ve got a lot of juice in
here that’s really important because
that should that’s your flavor one more
time big side down point inside the
hinge turn let the knife do the work
stay along the top clear that your
doctor muscle will always be found right
here if the hinge is here will always be
located right there Shell’s out clear
the adductor muscle there
place them on rocks oscillate so they
don’t fall over and you can keep all
that wonderful juice inside and that’s
how you properly shuck an oyster after
your shucking your oysters we will start
with the Rockefeller here I have two
quarts of baby spinach two bunches of
living watercress we are going to puree
that with a little bit
with a little bit of ice water and one
tablespoon of garlic and that’ll pure
eight you get a that’ll go to you have a
really nice smooth puree about twenty to
thirty seconds
next I will add in one cup of onions to
saute in one cup of butter to this
butter onion mix we are going to remove
the top to our food processor and to
that we will remove anything that did
not get processed we will add this very
carefully to your butter and onion
mixture being very careful there is
water in here and that can splatter
we’re going to saute the onions and the
puree with with the butter and garlic
for a few moments keeping putting the
ice water into the into the food
processor allows it to puree smoothly
and also keeps the puree nice and bright
green speaking of green one of the
theories behind the Rockefeller is that
it’s so green that is in green as the
color of money and when this dish was
invented john d rockefeller was the
richest man in the world is one theory
the the other was being that it’s such a
rich dish that that it was named after
rockefeller as well so this will cook
down just for a little bit it’s got a
lot of water in it still so we want to
evaporate that that that water to this
we are going to add a little bit of
Tabasco it’s about a tablespoon we are
going to add this is absinthe we are
going to add one tablespoon of absinthe
as well
also we are going to add breadcrumbs to
this the breadcrumbs is going to allow
the puree to to set up you can make this
puree to three four days that will last
in the fridge for about a week you can
do this in advance and the day of your
oyster rockefeller party you can take
that out of the fridge when it cools
down with that with that bread in there
it’s going to set up and then you’ll
take a spoon and go directly on top of
your oysters we’ll show that in a second
so we’ll take this is 1/4 cup so we’ll
take 1/2 cup of bread breadcrumbs there
stir that in nicely as you’ll see the
bread will start to thicken this puree
up it will clump so you can use a whisk
or spoon this stuff will start to get
nice and bubbly and very hot always
being careful next we will add our salt
it’s about 1 tablespoon of salt kosher
salt to work or sea salt in this case
now turn your fire down when it really
starts to bubble we’re also going to add
the juice of half a lemon careful not to
get the seeds in there
you can see there it’s getting nice and
bubbly and thick important step into any
cooking is to always taste and that’s
very good if I do say so myself
so here we have our three petits oysters
and with the oysters you can you can
shut these in advance I’ve got some rock
salt here that will help to keep the
oyster from turning over but you can you
can shut these in advance a couple hours
in advance before your guests come over
and just set this in the in the
refrigerator so as you can see we’ve got
a very nice thick puree here so we’ll
take a spoonful of the puree to go on
each of these and we’ll just ladle that
right over there just like so
now with this cold if you if you do this
in advance then you can you can heat
your oysters up so the oysters are nice
and hot
then put your puree on and then those
will go into the oven for approximately
3 to 4 minutes until your Rockefeller
are nice and hot if they do get hot so
be careful then we’ll take some Parmesan
cheese and we will grade that directly
onto the oyster more is better
you can also pre grade this this
parmesan if you want I like to do it
right before I use it
once you’ve graded your cheese you’re
going to go back into the into the oven
you want the broiler to to melt the
cheese and give it a nice nice Brown you
probably need to keep your eye on this
they can take anywhere from a minute to
two minutes after about a minute or two
we’ll check our Oysters Rockefeller
under our broiler and the cheese has
Carmela’s nice and brown
they’re always served your oysters with
your baked oysters Rockefeller with a
couple slices of lemon as you can see
the cheese got nice and brown and that’s
Oysters Rockefeller at that time there
was no laws
there was nothing had no way to regulate
we realized after the pulp mills that
water quality was really important to us