My mother relates a family story about how her German Great Grandmother used to cook eel the traditional way in the good old days, until her husband saw her preparing the snake like live eels to cook and after that he refused to eat them any more.
yes, we eat eel in the Philippines, but the dish is not common in our area, so we have only eaten it in restaurants.
This video of preparing Eel Adobo (a Pampanga specialty) will give you the idea of why my grandfather decided to stick to plain fish: :
What brought this topic up was because HisotyExtra podcast has a discussion on why eels were a popular dish in Medieval England, and they refer you to Dr. Greeenlee's website for more information on how eels were not only eaten, but used to pay rent and taxes in Medieval England.
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw · Dec 12, 2019 So you're a medieval landlord, collecting property rent from your peasants in eels. How do you measure them? Eels were usually counted in units called sticks (25 eels) -- likely from the number of eels you can smoke on a stick at one time. 10 sticks of eels was called a bind.
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw · Dec 12, 2019 So may great questions! I'll try to get to them in coming days. But, briefly: There were LOTS of eels in medieval England. People ate them, traded them, wrote about them, & paid taxes in them. In 1200 there were 500k+ eels being paid in in-kind taxation each year. Here's a map!
Eels are part of a subplot in the latest historical novel by Ken Follet: History extra podcast LINK
the protagonist is digging a drainage ditch for his water logged plot of land and river eels swim into the drainage pond, giving him and his family a new source of food and income so they don't starve to death.
The Evening and the Morning is about Anglo Saxon England,
here is Follett discussing the book.
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