Consider the Eel
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.53 (631 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0807826936 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 200 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-12-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
It was delicious. "The eeler who explained the animal's life cycle to me did so as he served up an eel he had just taken from a trap, killed, cleaned, and cooked in olive oil in an earthenware dish," writes Schweid. Journalist Richard Schweid first learned the strange facts of the freshwater eel's life from a fisherman in a small Spanish town just south of Valencia. I was immediately fascinated." As this engaging culinary and natural history reveals, the humble eel is indeed an amazing creature. tables, over $2 billion worth of eel is still eagerly consumed in Europe and Asia each year.) The book also includes recipes, both historic and contemporary, for preparing eel.. (While this rich yet mild-tasting fish has virtually disappeared from U.S. Every European and American eel begins its life in the Sargasso Sea--a vast, weedy stretch of deep Atlantic waters between Bermuda and the Azores
"eelers" operating inshore catch and ship tons of wriggling eels to Europe and Japan. From Publishers Weekly While Spanish, German, Irish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese and especially Japanese people place Anguillae well above salmon in their cuisines, Americans, by and large, consider eels to be bait. Schweid visits five of the traditional eeling waters in Europe, but mostly he's concerned with recording the yarns of North Carolina's Outer Banks eel-fishing culture, where small-scale U.S. Thus, North American estuaries have the best remaining migratory wild eel populations; that fact provides a good foundation for a light science travelogue shuttling back and forth between eel capitals on both sides of the Atlantic. Schweid is searching hard for a handle on his slimy, reclusive subject, but even science is not much help: the migratory Atlantic genus has
"Tales of the Elusive Eel" according to Rob Hardy. If you are an American, it is unlikely that you have ever eaten eel. You are more likely to have eaten eel if you are a European, and if you are Japanese, you may well eat it regularly. It is hard to figure out just why Americans now have an aversion to eating eels and other countries do not, especially since eels are part of our Pilgrim heritage, they were enjoyed by our founding fathers, and they formed an important commercial catch earlier in the last century. It�s all very mysterious, but if you read _Consider the Eel_ (University of North Carolina Press) by Richard Schweid, you will quickly realize that almost everything con. Icky no more!! Sure eels are slimy and weird, but that doesn't mean you can't learn to love them!Read this book and instead of retching at the thought of a mouthfull of broiled eel, you'll find yourself smacking your lips (at least I did).Overall, this book seems well researched. It's well written and an overall fun read. Like an eel, it's sluggish some times. But page after page it remains fascinating.Buy it.. John the Reader said Maybe once was enough. Rather unusual for me to be reading a book on food, particularly seafood, and not be stimulated to cook and eat it. Ell, like gator-tail, chocolate-covered locust, dog, mealy-grub, and snake however are foods that I have decided not to eat again - once, maybe for some, twice - was enough.However, it is fascinating animal and well worth the considering given to it by Schweid, a Barcelona ex-pat from Nashville, who savors the "rich, fish taste" of eel like a true European. Still largely unknown to science in all its habits, gestation, reproduction and even exactly how it selects it breeding and living grounds. Once chosen however; the eel set