Frz. Yellow Eel Strip

I used to post this blog at myspace.com. I generally travel light, but I've decided to bring a few of the best posts of the last nine months along with me. Over the next week or so I'll be posting selections from The Best of Man of Constant Leisure. This entry was originally posted in January 2006.

Some day you may find yourself browsing in your local Asian grocery, and there you may stumble across a product called "Frz. Yellow Eel Strip" in the freezer section. Your mind may happily wander back to some eel sushi you enjoyed once, or you may remember a delicious braised eel dish you had at a Korean restaurant. And at that point, you may be tempted to purchase the package of "Frz. Yellow Eel Strip" and attempt to work a little Asian magic in your home kitchen.

Here is what the package looks like. Remember it well. Remember also that no matter how delirious your memories of those previous eel dishes are, the product in this bag will not help you relive them. Perhaps the $2.20 price tag should have been a tip off that culinary heaven was not herein contained.

"Frz. Yellow Eel Strip," as its name readily communicates to all but the thickest headed (i.e. myself), does not contain whole pieces of eel. Rather, it contains thin strips of eel that look way, way, way too much like worms. They look so much like worms that I was immediately tempted to throw this product in the garbage, or go fishing with it. But I instead pressed forward; I'm not one to waste $2.20, no sir. Also, it didn't look as though it would kill me.

The packaging for "Frz. Yellow Eel Strip" suggests helpfully that you cut these long, wormy strips into 1 1/2"-long wormy strips. This provides an opportunity for you to handle "Frz. Yellow Eel Strip" for a while before ingesting it. Hooray! More important, it renders the strips bite-sized, which ultimately proves quite helpful (for reasons that will soon become clear).

I heated a little sesame oil to smoking, then threw my bait into the pan; my jasmine rice, resembling no particular invertebrate, bubbled away in another pot. I let those guys cook well–there was no way in hell I was eating these things undercooked–tossing occasionally to make sure they were all cooked through. There was another method to this madness; most of the eel dishes I've enjoyed in restaurants seemed to have been slightly caramelized, and I was hoping to achieve the same effect here. Despairing of the wormy bits' ever reaching edibility on their own, I eventually spiked the dish with some light soy sauce and some Shaoxing cooking sherry. Ginger, scallions, and ten pounds of shrimp would all have helped the dish considerably, but alas I had none of these ingredients available.

Finally the moment of truth arrived: the rice was done, the eel was at least done. I mixed them up and piled it all on a plate. With the first bite I discovered the genius of cutting the eel into bite-size pieces: I didn't have to actually look at the food to shovel it into my mouth! And so, with the most recent New Yorker spread out before me, I dispatched this plate of food bellyward, and, truth be told, it was actually pretty tasty.

But I will never, ever prepare it again.