OYSTERS out of Season

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 17, 28 August 1944, Page 23

OYSTERS out of Season

* A KORERO REPORT +•

qq Z\pen the tin and to the contents of the can add one half-mug of skim milk, a pinch of salt, a shake of pepper, and a half-handful of flour. Allow the whole to simmer in a mess tin over a slow fire for a few minutes. Serve as Bluff Oyster Soup.” This is merely a suggestion for a variation of “ Oysters in Tin.” There is nothing rigid about the procedure. It can be modified to meet any situation, depending on closeness to the cook-house. But this isn’t a cooking lesson. It’s the story of those handy little cans which have developed or retained your taste for New Zealand’s favourite shell-fish. The previous issue of Korero told you how oysters were caught. Here is how they are canned.

Many servicemen were not oyster addicts before they left New Zealand, but an understandable wish to vary the monotony of “ M. and V.” has led them to sample the contents of the tin of oysters in their Patriotic parcel. They have usually been convinced that there is some excuse for the

enthusiast’s hungry longing for a large plate of Bluff oysters on shell. Perhaps it’s the indirect flavour of home that gets them. Whatever it is, they’ve stopped swopping their tin of oysters for one of coffee and milk (a sound exchange, anyway) and become oyster fans themselves. The oyster-canning factory at Bluff has two oyster-boats. When these two boats land their catch at the main wharf, it is tipped into railway trucks, run up to the factory, and bagged. Even if you weren’t interested

iii oysters before the war, you’ll know that the next step is to open these close little customers. If you were, you’ll know that thereby hangs a tale—sometimes a finger. An expert has been known to open a bag containing between sixty and seventy dozen oysters in twenty-five minutes. A short-bladed, round -topped knife was his only armament. Amateurs with carving-knife or chisel have taken as long to open six or seven. To-day most of the experts are away on more serious jobs, and machines operated by girls have replaced them. Some shells are still opened by hand, but the number of bags a day is only a third of the machines’ output. At the hand-opening bench there is room for about twenty men. The oysters are opened on a square of hardwood hollowed in the centre to take the concave curve of the shell. The knife is slipped in between the lips of the mouth of the shell (the • end farthest from the

thicker hinge) and drawn across the muscle inside where it joins the curved bottom of the shell. Then the oyster opens up. It sounds easy, but you first have to find the spot to slip the knife in and then give the muscle that dexterous cut which opens the shell. You don’t prise the shell open, but keep the knife flat all the time. When the muscle is cut the mouth will open sufficiently to let you break the two halves apart. Any attempt at physical force will usually be disastrous for the slim blade of the knife. In front of each opener is a water flume into which he drops the oyster, to be carried off for cleaning and canning. The openers get 5 s - a- bag and do on the average about five bags a day. The machines make the work look even easier. Seven girls sit at a long bench. In front of them are tilted trays (into which the bags of oysters are tipped) and a small spring plate on which the individual oysters are placed concave side down. Each plate has two sets of stops, one for the normal and one for the outsize oyster. The shell is placed against the appropriate stop, the girl holding it touches a pedal at her feet, and out shoots a knife which always slips into the shell at the exact spot, cutting the muscle on its way in. The’oyster opens up, the girl pulls the shell apart, throws the flat half to her feet and places the other, containing the oyster, on a travelling belt in front of her. ' The belt carries all the oysters on shell along to another table where other girls cut out the cream-coloured fish with a flexible knife. The oysters are dropped

into a water flume of stainless steel which runs off round the wall to the cleaningtable, collecting the contributions of the old-style openers as it goes. The girls working the machines each handle about ten sacks a day, but can step the number up to fourteen when the pressure is on. Thus they each open over eight thousand oys-

ters a day. The men open about half this number by hand and there are fewer of them. So when the boats are getting a good haul the factory is canning about eighty thousand oysters a day. Of course, there are days when the boats can’t put out because of the weather (it was too rough for dredging for three consecutive weeks recently), and this means slack time for the factory. But the staff are paid whether there is work for them or not. Normally they switch over to labelling and casing when the boats are weather-bound, but if the spell is a long one even this work will run out. The girls’ wages range from £3 to £3 7s. a week. The best money is earned by the girls on the opening-bench. It’s wet work and hard on the hands (the girls wear rubber gloves and gum boots), but there is no doubt that they are happy in it. Their own version of “ We Are The Boys From Way Down Under ” proves that. The water flume carries the oysters into a revolving screen where water is played over them and the grit washed off. A small bucket elevator next drops them on to a stainless-steel table perforated with small holes. This table is set on a slant and two girls pick the oysters over and then let them slide down to a flat stretch at the bottom. Here there are a number of recesses each holding the same number of oysters as a tin. The recesses are filled, the plate-that forms their floor is pulled out, and the oysters drop through into a set of tins below. The tins are then placed on a slowmoving belt and passed under taps leading

from cisterns of boiling brine. The taps fill the cans to capacity, but, just in case they lose any liquid as they turn a corner in the assembly line, another tap ensures that they are brimful before they are transferred to a revolving plate. Here a lid is automatically dropped on to each tin and another machine seams and seals it

on its way round. Packed into trays, the tins are cooked in a retort sixteen hundred at a time under 12 lb. steam pressure for about fifteen minutes. They are then stored for at least four days at ioo° C. to give any defects in canning a chance to appear. Labelled and cased, they are ready for the Patriotic parcels. The ii oz. tin is the same as is used by a condensed-milk factory just out of Invercargill. This factory supplies both tins and cases to the cannery. Each tin contains fourteen to twenty

oysters, depending on their size. Each case holds forty-eight tins. Last season the cannery sent away fifteen thousand cases and the majority of these tins filled a corner of a Patriotic parcel. In this way the Bluff oyster brought a flavour of home to New Zealand soldiers, sailors, and airmen all over the world. If you like to do a little arithmetic you’ll realise that our Forces overseas have quite a taste for oysters and that the Bluff oyster-beds will have to work a lot of overtime when the oyster addicts are once again back home.