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A sauce of reinette apples melted with pommeau and cream, finished with oyster liquor, then grilled golden. A warm Norman starter, recipe for 4.
Pommeau isn’t just an aperitif. In the kitchen, it melts apples down, deglazes a pan, binds a cream sauce. On oysters passed under the grill, it works wonders: the sweetness of the apple and the length of the calvados answer the brine, and the cream softens the whole thing.
It’s a festive starter, easy to pull off, that always surprises. Here’s how we make it at the domaine.
Recipe 01
A sauce of reinette apples melted down with pommeau and cream, finished with oyster liquor, then grilled until golden. A warm, festive Norman starter.
The apple and pommeau compote
Peel and core the apples, cut them roughly. Combine them in a saucepan with the pommeau and the chopped shallots. Reduce by three-quarters over medium heat.
Add the cream
Pour in the crème fraîche, stir, and let it cook gently until the sauce thickens.
Shuck the oysters
While that's cooking, shuck the oysters. Loosen the flesh and save the liquor. Add the liquor to the sauce, stir, then pass through a fine sieve. The sauce should stay slightly thick.
Coat and grill
Coat each oyster with sauce in its shell. Season with pepper. Place under a preheated grill for about 10 minutes. The oysters are ready when the sauce turns a golden colour.
A Pommeau de Normandie AOC. Ours, at 17% ABV, brings the fruit of the apple and the length of calvados to the sauce. Count on one glass for the compote, and save the rest of the bottle for the aperitif.
Yes. The creamy apple compote can be made a few hours in advance. Add the oyster liquor at the last moment, just before coating and grilling, to keep its briny freshness.
The sauce turns a golden colour and starts to brown under the grill, after about 10 minutes. The goal isn't to cook the oysters for long, just to warm them through and brown the sauce.
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