Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [64]
WHITEBAIT STYLE Turn the drained and dry elvers into a plastic or paper bag with some seasoned flour and shake them about so that they are coated with flour. Tip into a chip basket, allowing surplus flour to fall off (into the sink or on to a piece of paper). Fry them in hot deep fat for a few moments until they are crisp; give them a second frying time at a higher temperature, like chips, if they aren’t crisp in a few moments the first time. Serve with lemon quarters, and brown bread and butter.
To my way of thinking, the Loire and Spanish styles are the best way of eating elvers. Some cookery books allow 250 g (8 oz) per person: I find that 125 g (4 oz) is plenty. With any slightly unusual food, you should never give people the chance to feel surfeited, because this will increase any lurking quivers of revulsion. Small quantities, well cooked, leave a desire for more on another occasion.
HOW TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE EELS
Eels should be bought alive. Insist on this (unless your fishmonger can be trusted when he says the eels on sale have just been killed that morning). Then ask the fishmonger to kill it for you.
Many recipes demand skinned eel, but for grilling and baking I find that the skin acts as a valuable barding layer. And when it is crinkly brown and charred from a fire of charcoal or vine prunings, it is good to eat as well: those who don’t like it can easily cut it away at this stage. Certain dishes would be less appealing with the dark skin of the eel, matelote or a pie for instance, but consider the matter before you rush in to have it skinned.
Although the fishmonger will skin the eel for you – and he should have no hesitation, considering the price you are about to pay – it is prudent to know exactly what to do in case an angling husband or neighbour presents you with an eel in a bucket of water. If you are really squeamish, ask someone to hold it down while you kill it with one blow at the back of the head with a cleaver, and chop the rest rapidly into chunks without skinning them. I don’t like doing this; it makes me understand why people about to be beheaded were often anxious about the axeman’s aim.
A better system is to kill the eel by piercing through the back of the head, through the spinal marrow, with a strong skewer; it is fair to ask the angler to do this. Now suspend the eel from a strong hook, using a slip loop of rope. Make a circular cut with a Stanley knife just below the rope, right through the skin. Sprinkle the cut with salt and, with the assistance of pliers, ease the skin away from the body for about ½–1¼ cm (¼–½ inch), enough to provide a grip. Now pull the skin down the body as if you were removing a tight glove, pliers in one hand and a piece of skin in the other. This can be tricky. I must admit that I’ve sometimes swung round an eel as if it were a rope-swing on a streetlamp. But once you get going, it is easy. Untie the eel, cut off and discard the head, chop the rest into appropriately sized pieces, and wash and clean them. A warning – pieces of eel may continue to jerk about in a disconcerting way. Leave them for a while in a covered pot.
CHICKEN WITH EEL IN THE DIGOIN STYLE (Poulet de ferme étuvé à la digoinaise)
This old Burgundian recipe, like the pochouse on p. 505 from the last part of the nineteenth century, I would say, comes from Alexandre Dumaine, now alas dead, once one of the finest chefs in France, contemporary and friend of the great Fernand Point, the inspiration and founder of today’s nouvelle cuisine. Dumaine’s restaurant, the Côte d’Or at Saulieu