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Stewed Eel
(Anguille in umido) For this dish it is preferable to have good sized eels that must not be skinned, but cut in small pieces.
Chop some onion and parsley, put it on the fire with oil, salt, and pepper, and when the onion with oil, salt, and pepper, and when the onion is browned , add the pieces of eel. Wait until it has absorbed the taste of the onion sauce and then complete the cooking with tomato sauce (No. 12).
See that there is plenty of gravy and serve with little squares or diamonds of toast. squares or diamonds of toast. 119
A brief Italian braise that assumes a cook who has bought a whole eel and knows what to do with it. The essentials are the skin, which stays on, and the two-stage cooking: aromatics first, eel next, tomato last.
- Sourcing the eelEuropean eel (Anguilla anguilla) is listed as critically endangered and its international trade is restricted under CITES; depending on where you are, what is on sale may be farmed European, Japanese or American eel, usually already killed and cleaned. Ask the fishmonger to gut it and cut it into short lengths, skin on.
- Why the skin staysEel skin holds the very fatty flesh together through a braise; skinned pieces fall apart in the sauce. The skin also renders some of that fat into the gravy, which is the point of the dish.
- Raw eel bloodEel serum contains a protein toxin that irritates skin and eyes and is dangerous if swallowed raw. Cooking destroys it completely, so a stewed eel is entirely safe, but do not taste or handle the raw fish carelessly, and wash hands and board.
- "Sauce No. 12"The cross-reference is to a tomato sauce given elsewhere in the book; its contents are not on this page. About 1 1/2 cups of a plain, unsweetened passata-style sauce stands in for it.
- Quantities, since none are givenFor 2 lb of eel, figure one medium onion, a good handful of parsley, 3 tablespoons olive oil. That serves four with bread.
- Timing"Wait until it has absorbed the taste of the onion sauce" means about five minutes of turning the pieces in the hot oil. After the tomato goes in, 20 to 25 minutes at a bare simmer is enough; eel is fatty but the flesh still tightens and dries if pushed past half an hour.
- Plenty of gravyThe instruction is deliberate. Loosen with water or light stock if the sauce tightens, because the toast is there to be soaked. Cut the bread into squares or diamonds, fry or toast it dry, and set it around the dish rather than under it.
Anguille in umido is a standard of the Italian brackish-water kitchen, at home anywhere eels were trapped in numbers: the Comacchio lagoons on the Adriatic, the Venetian valli, the marshes around Orbetello. Eel was cheap, oily, kept alive in barrels until wanted, and above all it was a permitted fish, which made it a fixture of Christmas Eve and Lenten tables across Catholic Europe. The numbered cross-reference to a basic tomato sauce suggests the text belongs to a larger collection, though the source of the numbering is not clear; it does not match Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina of 1891. The doubled phrases in the paragraph have been left here as they stand.