Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Holiday Closures Coming and Yum?

All six locations of the Des Moines Public Library will be closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Thanksgiving fact du jour:  One of the foods feasted upon at the first Thanksgiving was...eel.  I should not disparage this time-honored dish as I have never eaten eel, but it is difficult to eat something you can't bring yourself to look at. Or think about too much.  But don't let me stop you!
Here is a festive eel recipe from Executive Chef Brad Farmerie of The Monday Room in New York City.

Glazed eel with pickled bean sprouts
First rustle up some eel and pickled bean sprouts. 
Slice the fresh-water eel,  fun! and coat the pieces with a mix of soy sauce, palm sugar, star anise, cinnamon and sancho pepper. Brown them under a salamander.  Gotta be a cooking term but wasn't the eel enough?  Let the eel cool and mix it with the pickled sprouts, chopped chives, cilantro and 'chiffonade of Thai basil'.  That last bit sounds yummy.  If chiffonade means what I think it does, light and fluffy. Toss with a dressing of lime juice, lime zest and chile. Put the whole shebang into a spoon and top with half a soft-boiled quail egg. Finish with a sprinkle of Maldon salt.  I imagine you could make some ingredient substitutes, but one of the cool things about Des Moines is it's so diverse you can probably find all this stuff.

Source:  Instructor, Nov/Dec2000, p78, 2/3p
Nation's Restaurant News, 5/5/2008, p52-52
as accessed through EbscoHost

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting, quite an amazing "side". I wonder how it goes with turkey.

Love the graphic.