Pawaru-Grahmata

№ 8III. nodaļa

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Smoked eel with young green peas

  • Serves 4
  • 1–2 days curing and drying, then about 2 hours; or 20 minutes with bought smoked fish
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Suttis duhmôs schahwehts.

Modernizētslpp. 136–137 · PDF 150–151
4 porcijas

The book gives no quantities: the eels are salted for 3 days, smoked for 4–5 days, then boiled. The amounts below are ours.

Method

6 soļi
  1. Rub the eel with salt and kitchen paper to remove the slime, rinse and dry it. Rub the 80 g salt all over, inside and out. Lay it in a dish, cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.
  2. Rinse off the salt, pat dry and leave the eel uncovered on a rack in the fridge overnight, so the skin dries and takes the smoke.
  3. Hot-smoke at 70–80 °C for 1–1½ hours, until the skin is golden brown (not black) and the flesh has reached 63 °C. Use a gentle smoke, as the book says, so the eel doesn't blacken.
  4. Simmer the smoked eel in water for 5 minutes to warm it through, as the book does, then lift it out and pull off the skin. Cut it into serving pieces.
  5. Cook the peas in a little lightly salted water for 3–5 minutes, until just tender. Add the butter and pour the peas, with a few spoonfuls of their liquid, over the eel.
  6. Shortcut: warm the bought smoked fish for 5 minutes in a steamer or in a covered dish over simmering water, skin it and serve with the peas as in step 5.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

large eels are salted to remove the slime, cleaned, washed, rubbed with salt inside and out and left for 3 days, then laid on paper on racks of broom twigs in the chimney with a little smoke so they don't turn black. After 4–5 days they are boiled and skinned and served with young green peas poured over. The shorter cure, the fridge, the hot smoker and the butter are ours.

Why we hot-smoke

the book's chimney smoking is a slow cold smoke over several days, and the boiling afterwards cooks the fish. Cold-smoking fish at home safely needs a cold smoker, a steady temperature below 30 °C and careful curing (Listeria and botulism are the risks). Hot smoking cooks the fish, so step 4 only warms it.

Keeping

the book warns that smoked eel doesn't keep long and easily picks up a bad taste, and should be kept somewhere dry. Keep it wrapped in the fridge and eat it within 4 days.

Eel

the European eel is critically endangered (IUCN Red List), and farmed eel is grown from wild-caught glass eels. Hot-smoked mackerel or trout is the easy substitute. If you smoke eel yourself, buy it killed and gutted by the fishmonger, and keep raw eel blood away from cuts and eyes.

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