A geography of Oysters

The complete guide to understanding, serving, and savouring one of North America’s original and most delicious foods - updated with more oysters, oyster bars, and oyster festivals.

consider the oyster

Consider the Oyster marks M.F.K Fisher’s emergence as a storyteller so confident that she can maneuver a reader through a narrative in which recipes enhance instead of interrupt the reader’s attention to the tales. She approaches a recipe as a published dream or wish, and the stories she tells here . . . are also stories of the pleasures and disillusionments of dreams fulfilled.

Food ARTISANS of Alberta

From the peaks of the Rockies to the sweeping prairie grasslands, Alberta’s fertile black soils and long summer days make it ideal for producing an impressive abundance of food. In addition to Wild Rose Country’s seven signature foods -beef, bison, canola, honey, Red Fife wheat, root vegetables, and Saskatoon berries - this thoughtful and convenient new guide showcased the stories and friendly faces of the province’s farmers, ranchers, chefs (including our very own), bakers, cheese makers, distillers, and more. Hit the trail, guidebook in hand, for countless memorable road trips and discover the gastronomic creativity, sustainability and diversity that binds and defines the food artisans of Alberta.

Oyster

This lavishly illustrated book traces the oyster’s fascinating journey through the history of gastronomy, art, literature and politics. A literary feast for history and food lovers, Oyster offers colourful anecdotes, eye-opening scientific facts, a wide array of visuals, and fifty recipes, ranging from traditional country dishes to innovations from leading contemporary chefs.

Drew Smith is a former editor of The Good Food Guide, which was a number-one bestseller for ten years. He has been a restaurant writer for the Guardian newspaper and has won the Glenfiddich award, which recognizes outstanding food and drink writing, three times. He lives in London.

Ship To SHore

John Bil, one of the food industry’s most beloved and respected authorities on all things fish, gives seafood lovers the knowledge and confidence they need to make smart decisions about the fish they consume. Why does halibut cost what it does? Were those wild spot prawns responsibly sourced? How do you clean a squid? And what’s the best way to prepare those live cherrystone clams when you get them home? Ship to Shore: Straight Talk from the Seafood Counter features over fifty delicious recipes accompanied by elegant, full-colour photography that will have you lining up at your local fish counter.

Sugar Shack

This 386-page book dedicated to maple syrup offers 100 recipes by Martin Picard, 2000 photographs, a short story by Marc Séguin, a journal describing life at the shack during the sugaring-off season, a technical chapter on harvesting maple water and the production and consumption of maple syrup, together with many illustrations by Tom Tassel. A cross between an art book and a culinary encyclopedia, it is as unique as the international reputation of the Au Pied de Cochon restaurant. Culinary research intersects with tradition in this book which is as iconoclastic as Martin Picard's world famous cuisine. Mixing genres and styles, just like this chef does in his kitchen, the book offers a touch of literature, a smattering of sexy images together with scientific information and cutting-edge gastronomical research.

The Big Oyster

Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants - the oyster.

For centuries New York was famous for this particular shellfish, which until the early 1900’s played such a dominant role in the city’s life that they abundant bivalves were GOtham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for all classed, and a natural filtration system for the city’s congested waterways.

Filled with cultural, historical and culinary insights - along with vintage recipes, maps, drawing, and photos - this dynamic narrative sweeps readers form the seventeenth-century founding of New York to the death of its oyster beds and the rise of American’s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough and tumble. Five Points slum to Manhattan’s Gilded Age dining chambers. With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining and delicious.

The Essential Oyster

With colourful tasting notes and backstories, recipes from America’s top oyster chefs, and renowned photographer David Malosh’s stunning portraits, The Essential Oyster is the definitive book for oyster lovers everywhere. From British Columbia to Barnstable, From New Orleans, to New Zealand, The Essential Oyster spotlights the world’s greatest oysters - the quirky, the rare, the historically significant, the flat-out yummiest - and captures the essence of each in a play on words and images that will delight oyster veterans and beginners alike.

The Oyster War

The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America.