Cider-Poached Oysters With Bordier Seaweed Butter

This is Brittany on a plate: oysters, cider, seaweed and butter, and nothing that did not come from the same coast. The oysters are poached in raw cider rather than eaten raw, set on a seaweed cider jelly, topped with a siphon mousse and a buckwheat tuile, and served with toast spread in Bordier Seaweed Butter. It is restaurant cooking, written for a cook with a siphon and an afternoon. Expect to spend two to three hours across several components.

At a glance

Difficulty: Advanced
Serves: 20 oysters, four to five as a first course
Active time: About 90 minutes across five components
Cook: Bordier gives no times. Reducing a liter of cider by three quarters takes roughly 30 minutes on its own.
Key ingredient: Bordier Seaweed Butter

Why this works

Seaweed butter is the butter that started Bordier's flavored range, made in 1986 after a meal with friends. It is iodised Breton seaweed folded into hand-churned butter, and it tastes distinctly of the sea without tasting fishy. Next to an oyster it is not a contrast at all, it is an amplifier: both are carrying the same mineral, saline note, and putting them on one plate makes that note louder rather than muddier.

The rest of the plate is built on cider, which is the other thing Brittany makes. Reducing a liter by more than three quarters concentrates the apple acid and tannin into something closer to a vinegar than a drink, and folding that into whipping cream in a siphon gives you a mousse that is sharp instead of heavy. The same cider, set with agar agar and poached seaweed, becomes a cold jelly that holds the oyster in place. Poaching rather than serving raw firms the oyster slightly and takes the edge off its rawness, which matters when there are this many strong flavors around it. The buckwheat tuile brings the toasted, nutty note that Bretons put under almost everything, and the crunch the plate would otherwise lack.

Ingredients

Bordier names its suppliers for several of these. Substitute freely on brand, but read the tips before you shop, because the ingredient list and the method disagree on a few quantities.

Ingredient	Metric	US
Tsarskaya oysters, size 2	20	20
Organic buckwheat flour (Harpe Noire)	30 g	About 1/4 cup
Organic wheat flour (Harpe Noire)	60 g	About 1/2 cup
Baby carrots, purple and white	3	3
Mini chioggia beets	2	2
Dulse and wakame seaweed	100 g	About 3.5 oz
Bordier Seaweed Butter	150 g	5.3 oz
Peanut oil	70 g	About 1/3 cup
Raw cider	1 L	About 4 1/4 cups
Whipping cream, 35%	1/2 L	About 2 cups
Agar agar	As needed	As needed
Curry and cumin	As needed	As needed
Salt and pepper	To taste	To taste
Rye bread	As needed	As needed

Method

Step 1: Cider mousse, and poach the oysters

For the mousse, reduce a liter of cider by more than three quarters. Add a spoonful of cider vinegar and half a liter of whipping cream, load it into a siphon and set it aside. Open the oysters, keeping the shells to serve on. Discard the first water, then poach the oysters in simmering cider. Lift them out onto a cloth.

Step 2: Seaweed cider jelly

Rinse and chop 30 g of the seaweed, wakame and dulse. Combine it with 30 g Madras curry powder, 20 g cumin, a liter of cider and two level spoons of agar agar, and bring to a boil, poaching the seaweed as it cooks. Pour the jelly into the bottom of a soup plate and keep the plates cold.

Step 3: Buckwheat and wheat tuiles

Mix 240 g water with the buckwheat and wheat flours, the peanut oil and 6 g salt. Cook each tuile in a blini pan with no fat, until golden brown.

Step 4: The vegetables

Slice the carrots and the chioggia beets very thin. Blanch them, then cut them out with a small cutter.

Step 5: Plate

Set an oyster on the jelly and add a touch of cider mousse, dusted with curry powder. Decorate with the vegetable slices and a tuile. Serve with two slices of toast spread with seaweed or buckwheat butter.

Tips from our kitchen

Buy two liters of cider, not one. The ingredient list says one liter, but the method uses a liter for the mousse reduction and another liter for the jelly. Two is what the recipe actually needs. Raw, unfiltered Breton-style cider is worth seeking out, since a sweet commercial cider will reduce to syrup.
Three ingredients appear only in the method. Cider vinegar in step one, 240 g of water in the tuile batter, and 6 g of salt for the same batter are all absent from Bordier's ingredient list. Have them on hand. The curry and cumin are listed without amounts and quantified in step two as 30 g and 20 g, and the agar agar likewise as two level spoons, which we read as two level tablespoons for two liters of liquid.
You will use about a third of the seaweed. The list calls for 100 g, the jelly uses 30 g. The rest is presumably there for the plate. Do not put it all in the jelly, which would turn it dense and bitter.
Agar agar sets hard and sets fast. It must reach a full boil to activate, and it gels as it cools past about 40 C (105 F), so pour the jelly into cold plates immediately. Test a spoonful on a cold saucer first: if it sets rubbery, thin the batch with more cider and boil again.
Poach the oysters for seconds, not minutes. Simmering cider firms them almost instantly. Thirty to forty seconds is plenty. Left longer they shrink, toughen, and lose the liquor that makes them worth eating.
Charge the siphon and chill it before service. A cider-and-cream base needs at least an hour cold to hold its foam. Shake hard before each dispense. If the mousse comes out watery, the reduction was not concentrated enough and the mixture is too thin to trap gas.
Cook the tuiles dry. Bordier says no fat in the pan, and a well-seasoned blini pan or a good nonstick is the only way that works. The batter is loose. Pour a thin layer, wait for the surface to matte over, then turn once.

How to serve it

Serve four or five oysters per person as a first course, plates straight from the refrigerator, with the buttered rye toast alongside and a glass of the same cider you cooked with. Everything on the plate except the tuile is cold, which is the point: the toast is the only warm element and it arrives last. If you are putting together a full Breton menu, the French churned butter collection covers the rest of what you will want on the table.

Where to buy Bordier Seaweed Butter in the US

The French Pantry ships Bordier butter across the United States in insulated overnight packaging, straight from the workshop in Brittany.

Churned Seaweed Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): iodised Breton seaweed in hand-churned butter, the original flavored butter of the house, made since 1986.
Churned Buckwheat Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): roasted buckwheat in butter, Bordier's alternative for the toast in the final step.

For the rest of the range, browse the Maison Bordier collection.

Frequently asked questions

How much seaweed butter do I need for this recipe?

The recipe calls for 150 g. Our blocks are 4.4 oz (125 g), so you need two blocks, with about 100 g left over. If you also want to butter the toast with buckwheat butter as Bordier suggests, add a block of that as well.

Can I substitute a different butter?

Seaweed butter is what ties the plate to the oyster, so it is the one ingredient we would not change. Buckwheat Butter is Bordier's own alternative for the toast and is a genuine option. Bordier Salted Butter works if neither is available, but the sea note goes with it.

What if I cannot find Tsarskaya oysters?

Tsarskaya are cultivated in Cancale, a few miles from the Bordier workshop, and size 2 is a medium oyster of roughly 3 oz. Any deep-cupped Pacific oyster of similar size takes the poaching well. Buy them alive, closed, and heavy for their size.

Does Bordier butter need to be refrigerated?

Yes. Bordier butter is a fresh, hand-churned product and ships cold. Keep it in the refrigerator and take it out about twenty minutes before you need to spread it on the toast.

How should I store the butter?

Wrap an opened block tightly in its own paper or in parchment and keep it in the coldest part of the refrigerator, in a closed container so it does not take on other smells. Use it within about two weeks. Unopened blocks freeze for up to three months.

Can I make any of it ahead?

Most of it. The jelly, the vegetables and the siphon base can all be made the day before. The tuiles keep a day in an airtight tin. Open and poach the oysters at the last minute, and plate immediately after.