Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [66]
3 large egg yolks
125 ml (4 fl oz) whipping or double cream (optional)
lemon juice
6 slices fried bread, if dish it to be eaten hot
Cut up the eel into pieces that will fit nicely on to the bread, for eating hot. For cold eating, cut them into fewer, longer pieces. Season and fry them in the butter until they begin to brown, then put in the sorrel and spinach. As they cook down, add the herbs and wine. Simmer until the eel is tender, about 15 minutes depending on thickness. Take the pan from the heat. Bone the eel pieces and arrange them on the hot bread on a serving dish or on six plates, and keep them warm: for cold eating, arrange the boned fillets on a serving dish and put it near the stove while you finish the sauce.
In the pan, beat the egg yolk with the cream if used, and some of the hot herby liquor. Put the pan back on the heat, stir in the egg yolk mixture and continue stirring until the sauce thickens gently, without coming near boiling point. Check the seasoning, sharpen agreeably with lemon juice and pour over the eel. Serve either very hot with very hot plates, or chilled.
AN EEL PIE WORTHY OF EEL-PIE ISLAND
From the seventeenth century until recently, people went to enjoy themselves at Twickenham Eyot in the Thames – in other words Eel-Pie Island. Boating parties, anglers, picnickers, gathered on its leafy acres, and bought eel pies from the inn. How sad that the famous inn should have ended up as a hippy battleground. Here is a recipe from The Cook’s Oracle by Dr William Kitchiner. It was published in 1843, when Eel-Pie Island was at the height of its prosperity, and soon after the inn had been enlarged to include a splendid assembly room.
The interesting thing is that this recipe, which I thought had vanished from our cookery many years before, turned up again recently when I was preparing British Cookery in the winter of 1983–84. It is on the menu of the Old Fire Engine House restaurant in Ely, close to the Fens where eels still flourish. The proprietor, Ann Jarman, told me that she found the recipe in a local Women’s Institute publication. Another example – there must be hundreds – of a dish once in the national repertoire surviving as a regional oddity. American cookery is full of such fossils – transparent tarts and oyster loaves being two conspicuous examples of once popular dishes that in this country we no longer make.
‘Skin clean and bone two Thames eels. Cut them in pieces and chop two small shallots. Pass the shallots in butter for five minutes, and then add to them a small faggot of parsley chopped, with nutmeg, pepper, salt and two glasses of sherry. In the midst of this deposit the eels, add enough water to cover them and set them on the fire to boil. When boiling-point is reached, take out the pieces of eel and arrange them in a pie-dish. In the meantime, add to the sauce two ounces [60 g] of butter kneaded with two ounces [60 g] of flour, and let them incorporate by stirring over the fire. Finish the sauce with the juice of a whole lemon, and pour it over the pieces of eel in the pie-dish. Some slices of hard-boiled egg may be cunningly arranged on the top, and in it amung the lower strata. Roof the whole with puff pastry; bake it for an hour. And lo! A pie worthy of Eel-Pie Island. It is a great question debated for ages on Richmond Hill whether this pie is best hot or cold. It is perfect either way.’
NOTE Use dry or medium-dry sherry – or white wine if you prefer it. Put into a hot oven (gas 8, 230 °C/450 °F), and after about 20 minutes – by which time the pastry should be well risen – lower the heat to moderate (gas 4, 180 °C/350 °F). No need to bone the eel: there should be about 1 kg (2 lb). Light fish stock can be used instead of water, and you may not need all the beurre manié to thicken it.
ITALIAN GRILLED AND BAKED EEL
Grilled eel is very popular in Italy: bay leaves are used, sometimes a little rosemary. In the north, a dish of Mostarda di Cremona will go with it; this is a mixture of many fruits pickled in a mustard and garlic-flavoured