Curried Oysters with Cucumber Sauce, my Wolfgang Puck dupe recipe
a Chinois on Main signature appetizer done easy
My friend John got me playing the New York Times word game called Strands. Friday’s theme was the 1980s — neon and headbands were among the correct words. What were you up to in the 1980s?
I was in high school and college. I’d also learned to sew, crochet, and knit. My mom, a self-taught tailor with French sewing skills disciplined my topstitches until they were straight and perfect. Threads were snipped so nothing looked messy. Trousers were ironed.
I sewed some of my own clothes, simple stuff, nothing with zippers, which I never mastered. My mom made couture items, many of which I still have from the late 1980s. I can’t throw them away because they represent labor and love, plus the era of shoulder pads.
The 1980s was also when I began reading the Los Angeles Times Food section every Wednesday. It was the inception of modern fusion cooking. It was peak Wolfgang Puck time in Los Angeles. Spago opened in 1982 on the Sunset Strip and Chinois on Main debuted in 1983 in Santa Monica. Puck was king.
I was fascinated but didn’t have a sense of it until the early 1990s, after I’d graduated from college and was kind of floundering in my career choices (I wasn’t cut out to be a banker). My friend and Japanese-born chef, Maki, got a cheffing job at Chinois on Main. She was formerly at L’Orangerie, one of the city’s best French restaurants.
Maki and her French chef husband, Christophe, frequently came over on their days off and we’d all cook, drink, and eat. At one point, they both worked at Chinois on Main. Rory and I couldn’t afford to dine at the restaurant (we were living in a $645/month rent-controlled apartment), but Maki would teach me easy Chinois recipes she learned from the restaurant and its Japanese head chef.
Yes, these were non-Chinese people making Chinese-French-Californian food. No one questioned what Puck and his crew did. Angelenos adored Chinois on Main, as they did Spago, where smoked salmon pizza reigned supreme.
Among the dishes Maki taught me was Chinois on Main’s warm curried oysters with cucumber sauce. I’ve made it countless times since the 1990s and am sharing it with you today, after many years of refining the dish for home cooks to easily make it. It’s a fabulous celebration dish any time, but why not New Year’s?
How good is the dish? Decades later, the warm curried oysters are still on the Chinois on Main menu for about $30. Each order comes with 4 oysters. Not bad, considering you get salmon pearl caviar on top.
For this post, I went to Whole Foods for the oysters (there’s often a Friday $1 oyster deal for Prime members) and splurged on white sturgeon caviar. The fancy caviar turned out to be too delicate so you can use less expensive fish eggs — which underscores how much cheaper and more fun it is to eat at home.
What I’m saying is this: I’m going to teach you how to make the dish, and to tweak it to make it your signature dish. Below you’ll find:
Oyster and caviar selection tips
2 videos loaded with pointers for oyster shucking and how to bring the dish together like a cheffy pro
A detailed recipe in text and PDF format
Here’s a little preview video of how this recipe comes together:
Let’s do it so you can prepare this dish for New Year’s or any celebration!