Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [67]
Recipes for grilling eel can easily be adapted to the oven. Some friends of ours, who spend the summer at Lake Bracciano to the north of Rome, are able to buy the most enormous fat eels. They cut them into chunks about 5 cm (2 inches) long, and arrange them on a grid in a roasting pan. They are brushed with olive oil, seasoned and topped with a bay leaf for each chunk. The pan goes into a hot oven (gas 5, 190 °C/375 °F) until the eel is cooked, i.e. when the flesh can be prised easily from the bone. It is essential to place the eel on a grid or rack of some kind, so that the fat can drain away. Serve with lemon quarters, or with the Mostarda di frutta from Cremona.
The apotheosis of eel in Italy is the magnificent Capitone arrostito, one of the ritual dishes of the Christmas Eve dinner, the cenone, the start of the festival. In all Roman Catholic countries, this meal is always margo, lean, a fasting meal without meat. Fasting is one of those ideas which puzzle Protestants, they take it to mean going without food (or else eating badly cooked boiled fish on Friday): I remember fellow pupils at school fainting away in the cold church at early communion because they had had nothing but sips of water. To learn that oysters followed by monkfish or lobster is just as virtuous, whereas steak and chips or sausage and mash would be sinful – I know which I would rather have any day – make Protestants suspicious of the honesty of the Roman Catholics. Or rather it did in the part of the world where I grew up.
Capitone arrostito makes a good excuse for Romans to visit the huge and glittering Piazza Vittorio market to choose a fine fat eel, most probably from the lagoon at Comacchio. For 6 people, you need at least 1½ kg (3 lb) or a bit more since it is a feast you are preparing. It needs to be skinned, for elegance.
At home, cut the eel into 5- or 8-cm (2- or 3-inch) pieces. In a large bowl, beat together a vinaigrette of 250 ml (8 fl oz) olive oil, 4 tablespoons lemon juice or wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Add 2 or 3 bay leaves. Put in the well-washed pieces of eel, mixing them up thoroughly. You can also add a good handful of breadcrumbs. Leave for 2 hours or longer.
Drain the pieces, then thread them on to long skewers if you have an electric spit, or on to six individual skewers if you intend to grill, barbecue or oven-roast them. Between each piece put a bay leaf, and on long skewers use chunks of bread at each end to help keep the eel in place as the spit turns. If you are baking the eel, stand the skewers on a rack in a pan so that the fat can drip away freely.
However you decide to cook the eel, it should come into contact at first with high heat. With an oven, preheat it to gas 8, 230 °C (450 °F). You can lower the temperature later if there is a risk of scorching. With indoor grills and electric spits, preheat them for 15 or 20 minutes. With charcoal, make sure that it has reached that ashy grey-looking stage that conceals the fierce red heat of the coals beneath.
As the eel begins to drip, baste it with left-over marinade and keep basting it with fresh fine breadcrumbs that will catch the heat and turn into a golden-brown coating by the time the eel parts from the bone and is cooked.
Have ready a very hot serving dish and plates. Intersperse the skewers of eel with lemon wedges and little bunches of parsley.
MATELOTE OF EEL (Matelote d’anguille)
Unlike many of the smaller French rivers, the Loir has never been canalized into straight, poplar-lined elegance. It runs into a medieval diversity of side streams and leats, which once turned the wheels of a hundred and more mills from Proust’s Illiers-Combray down to Angers.