Pawaru-Grahmata

№ 2III. nodaļa

Zutis it zili vārīts

Eel cooked blue in salted vinegar

  • Serves 4
  • about 40 minutes
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Suttis it silli wahrihts.

Modernizētslpp. 132 · PDF 146
4 porcijas

The book gives no quantities; the amounts below are ours.

Method

6 soļi
  1. Rinse the eel briefly without scrubbing, so the slime on the skin stays on. Cut it into pieces 5–6 cm long, skin and all.
  2. Push a drinking straw or a thin skewer through the canal above the backbone of each piece to push out the spinal cord, then rinse out any blood.
  3. Bring the unsalted water to the boil in a wide pan, put the eel in and let it boil for 2 minutes. The skin turns slate blue.
  4. Drain the eel and keep it aside. Pour the diluted vinegar and the salt into the same pan and bring to the boil.
  5. Put the eel back in and simmer gently for 20–25 minutes, until the flesh comes away from the bone and has reached 63 °C next to it.
  6. Lift the pieces into a warm dish and scatter the parsley over.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

cutting the eel with its skin on, pushing out the spinal cord with a straw, the short boil in unsalted water and the finish in boiling well-salted vinegar, with parsley on top, are the book's. Diluting the vinegar and the times are ours.

Why blue

the blue colour comes from the slime on the skin meeting hot liquid and acid, as in German Aal blau or French truite au bleu. It only works with very fresh fish whose slime is intact, so this recipe skips the salt rub of 03-001.

The spinal cord

pushing it out keeps the backbone from leaving a dark streak in the flesh. A thin skewer does it as well as the book's straw.

Vinegar

neat modern vinegar (5–6 % acid) makes the fish very sharp, so we dilute it by half. Use it neat if you want the book's full sourness.

Eel

the European eel is critically endangered (IUCN Red List), and farmed eel is grown from wild-caught glass eels, so it doesn't spare the wild stock. Farmed rainbow trout is the best substitute here, since it is the classic fish for cooking blue: simmer whole 300 g trout for 10–12 minutes in step 5. If you do use eel, buy it killed and gutted by the fishmonger, and keep raw eel blood away from cuts and eyes (cooking destroys its toxin).

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