Start by making a blonde roux. Melt 1/2 stick of butter (1/4 cup) in a big Dutch oven and add the minced white onions and garlic. Stir. Add the 1/4 flour. It will almost immediately become a thick paste. Add the greens: 2 bunches of parsley (cut off the stems and roughly chop the rest); 1/4 bulb of fennel, sliced very thin; chives (1/3 of a pack of chives, the kind you buy in the produce-herb section of the grocery store), fresh tarragon (about 8 sprigs); six scallions chopped; celery with leaves (two stalks). Cook over low heat until you have a mush of greens. The mixture may get too dry — add about 1 TBS. of oyster juice. Add another 1/4 cup of butter (another 1/2 stick) gradually. Keep stirring so that the mixture doesn’t stick to the pot. COOK FOR ABOUT AN HOUR OVER LOW HEAT. But, save a little bit of softened butter for when you start processing the greens. You’ll need one whole stick of butter to two bunches of parsley. Season with salt. Season with lemon juice (you will wind up adding about 3 generous squeezes of lemon or the juice of about 3/4 lemon). Add the 1 TBS. of Pernod. Add 1 heaping TBS. of shredded cheese (since I can no longer stand the taste of parmesan I use a very strong white cheddar, e.g., Sartori in the black package). Add about 4 TBS. bread crumbs (stale French bread or one of those rustic baguettes from Fresh Market pulverized into very fine crumbs). Let this mixture cool! Then puree it — I started the puree in the food processor, adding the last TBS. or so of softened butter, and then relocated the mixture to a bowl and used my immersion blender. When you have a smooth puree, put it in a piping back with a big star tip (the pink Wilton tip) and pipe the topping onto the oysters. Now, for the oysters: I bought a pint of oysters at Dorignac’s and placed one big one in each ceramic oyster shell. (If you have shuck raw oysters and use the real shells, then more power to you!) BROIL AT 550 DEGREES FOR 12 MINUTES. But check on them before 12 minutes go by! In my old oven, I broiled them for 8 minutes, but in my new oven, it’s 12 minutes. Go figure. Broilers scare me because they can burn your beautiful food in no time! But, you’ve got to broil these oysters because if you try to bake them, the butter will melt and you’ll get kind of an oily topping (as opposed to the little crispy-crustiness on top and the smooth unctuous filling beneath). You might want to squeeze a drop or two of lemon juice on top and serve. This recipe makes 9 oysters for me. But I tend to pile on a lot of the puree so I could probably get 12 oysters out of this recipe if I were more judicious with the topping.
