braised eel 紅燒白鰻

When I was an young adult living in Hong Kong. I worked in an appliance and electronic store. The hours was long and there were no weekend off nor paid holidays. Well may be a few days off. A few pastimes including going swimming at a beach at night after the store closed at 9pm. One time before a typhoon made landfall we decided to drive to Clear Water Bay to snorkel.



We got into the water at a small bay when it was drizzling. The water gets quite deep there and where we were diving the sandy bottom was 30 or 40 feet deep. The visibility was excellent. Our fireman friend has access to scuba tank and gear so he was the only one with it. The rest of use were free diving with snorkels. Pretty soon I was up to the challenge of getting to the bottom. It was the deepest I had ever dived up to that day. At first my ears was hurting from the pressure. Then I realize I can ease the pain by blowing hard with the nose pinched to equalize the pressure. I begun to pick up the sea cucumbers on the bottom. There were black and the size a big cucumber. As soon as I pick one up it oozed out strings of white sticky threads that clings around my hand and arm. It didn't hurt so I collected a few to bring back.

Before long we spotted crab pots. My fireman friend decided to help himself by raiding the small fish inside. He collected may be 15 - 20 enough for dinner. In one of the pot there was this eel and he took that too. Later that night we return to our manager's apartment to make dinner. That was were I first experience those tasty little fish and the eel. We cooked the eel with some of the sea cucumbers I caught. I learnt for the first time how to prepare eel - just mentally. It would be decades later that I would prepare eel myself, and I just cook with what I remember that night.

My Asian fish monger would have live eels from time to time but very rarely. In the last couple of years I have look to no avail. I asked the owner why and she said that the price has risen so high she had been afraid to be stuck with the investment only to find no buyers. Later on I would learnt on a Nature program about the mystery live of eels, and what happen to the eels supply and demand in the world. The demand of eels in China and Japan and the popularization of sushi all over the world are putting extreme strain on eel supply. Once self-sufficient, today Japan today imports majority of the eels the country consumes from overseas.

US eel fishermen has been selling wild eel fingerling they catch to China for circa $0.50 each. These fingerlings are then raised in farms there and then exported to Japan, or consume in the domestic market. A good amount is tuned into sushi ready sugar and soy sauce glazed cooked "sushi eel" that is exported to all over the world including the US where the fingerlings originated. I seldom order eel in a sushi restaurant because I knew the back story.

A week ago was the first time in many years I saw eels again at my fish monger. Chinese call this white eels 白鰻. For $12.99 per pound the price is the lowest I have seen. I bought one about 1.3 lb. I asked the owner where they are from and she told me East Coast.

 i notice the air freight label on these blue crabs

i prepared the small eel with the ingredients i have; among other things i used leek, onion, garlic, ginger, and a bit of fermented soy beans; the seasoning include soy sauce, oyster sauce, and dash of sugar

the braised eel is best eaten with a bowl of plain jasmin rice; because of the rich flavor just 3 pieces of inch-long pieces is sufficient for a modest meal

 i also made a leek soup with pork neck bone and fresh mussels

A few days later I decided to go back and get another eel, thinking it may be a very long time before I encounter them again. This time I bought a larger one weighted in at 1.6 lbs. I was not in the mood to deal with preparing the live eel that night so I left it in the fridge overnight. The next morning I open the fridge to my horror. It had escape from the bowl and struggle violently in the fridge and made a mess. It was exhausted when I found it but very much alive.

it took me nearly an hour to clean up the slim inside the fridge

Slaughtering eel is not for the faint of heart. It is one creature that will put up the biggest fight. Even with the head chopped off the body will fight you powerfully for the next hour or more. This time I asked my fish monger what is the technique. The man told me the moment you beat it unconscious you have to immediately cut the stomach open to remove the gut. Well the truth is you cannot truly knock it unconscious. It looks more like stunned for a few moments. nuff said...

chopping the eel into inch-long pieces requires deliberate and accurate strikes of a heavy clever; and yes the eel continues to coil left and right while you try to aim the clever

i managed not to chop my fingers off

just a bit of fermented soy beans goes a long way

 saute the garlic, leek, and onion first follow with the fermented beans

Since learning about more of Cajun and Creole cooking I learnt to let loose on use of seemingly unsuitable ingredients. While the braise eel recipe is very much Chinese I used leek and yellow onion both are more considered as Western ingredients. I also used Tennessee country ham and bourbon! These too are unorthodox substitutes. Chinese uses a type of dried cured ham 金華火腿 and shaojiu 燒酒.

 shiitake mushrooms

just add sparing amount of water and let it simmer for about 30 minutes until the eel is tender; and most importantly absorbed the seasoning sauce

before serving, i cooked a few leaves of napa cabbage stew them till tender in the juice from the cooked eel

 here is the closeup of the tender and flavorful eel pieces

this eel has no pin bones so it is really easy to pick out the main bone as you eat; most asians would suck the bone dry in the mouth