Disappearing Eels

Now I am really depressed. http://www.ices.dk/marineworld/eel.asp

Sorry to start off the week with such bad news.

As with documentaries on African elephants, gorillas, genetic deformities in frogs and the terminal illnesses of coral reefs, I can't even bear to go to the link. It is all just too depressing.

dicksond:

That is depressing, especially given that eels are pretty hearty fellows in my experience. When I was a kid, when the Passaic River was one of the most poluted ones in the country, it was still full of eels -- not that many other fish, but lots of eels, which were easily caught (though, alas, not fit for eating).

You mentioned recently Dutch smoked eel. Quite delicious stuff.

What will Naples do if the eels disappear? The traditional, even de rigeur Christmas Eve pièce de résistence in Naples and Campania is a big eel, 'o capitonë. I still remember the somewhat terrifying sight (at least for a small child) of my grandparents beheading and skinning one of the poor fellows...

What will the Flemings do without their Paling in 't groen?

And who can forget the scene with the horse's head in the Tin Drum/Die Blechtrommel...

A

Antonius wrote:
And who can forget the scene with the horse's head in the Tin Drum/Die Blechtrommel...

A

The only scene with a horse head in any movie that I can recall is in the Godfather...that's quite enough for me.

Steve:

Check out Tin Drum; the head and the eels are all real. Quite a memorable scene...

A

Per Antonius' reference to the beheading of eels:

My mentor in cooking (and much else) had a French cookbook which included a dish for which it was advisable to get out one's "lamprey killing box" and set to work. There followed what can only be described as instructions for an extended torture session with metal hooks for exsanguination and boiling water used to caused the lamprey to thrash his own scales off against the rough wooden sides of the box.

After treating the reader to this harrowing scenario, the writer allowed as how the process might seem, to the uninitiated, "un peu cruel." "Un peu cruel" became a catch-phrase between us thereafter, denoting any absurd understatement.

mrbarolo wrote:Per Antonius' reference to the beheading of eels:

My mentor in cooking (and much else) had a French cookbook which included a dish for which it was advisable to get out one's "lamprey killing box" and set to work. There followed what can only be described as instructions for an extended torture session with metal hooks for exsanguination and boiling water used to caused the lamprey to thrash his own scales off against the rough wooden sides of the box.

Well, MB, now we know where the eels have gone. News of this got out and there probably was a mass suicide.

What will I do without an eel snack to look forward to?

mrbarolo wrote:
My mentor in cooking (and much else)

I think I don't even want to think about the "much else"