Wrestling With Rick Stein's Conger Eel - And Winning

Fish cooking is bit of mystery to me to be honest, but this weekend I bought and cooked conger eel for the first time. It was my first tentative step into murky depths of snappers and skates, mullets and mackerels, bouillabaisse and bass which I’m hoping to master over the next year or so. One of the reasons for not getting stuck in to our finned friends before was the lack of a decent fishmonger near by - and my negative feelings about supermarket pre-packed portions especially applies to fish because everyone says it’s got to be as fresh as possible to be really appreciated. However now the ‘new’ Arndale market in Manchester features two very large fish counters - stocking what looks like pretty decent, fresh product – so I’ve decided to take the plunge.

And there will be no more intentional aquatic puns from this point forward.

As it happen near the new market in the Arndale is also a new Waterstone’s – who had Rick Stein’s Seafood paperback on special offer. Seeing as Rick is famous for fish, and having enjoyed his attitude to food and cooking on French Odyssey and Food Heroes, I figured he was a good chef to help me through the mysteries of the deep – so I bought it.

First thing about the book is a useful guide at the beginning about how to prepare most common fish and seafood for cooking. Step by step instructions, accompanied by decent photography, shows you how to carve up all types of fish and gives the novice a basic grounding in fish mongering – and that’s exactly a beginner like me needed.

Well anyway, the fish stalls in the market had some large slices of conger eel (about 400g) that looked meaty and substantial - and Rick’s book had what looked like a fairly straight forward recipe for a ‘poêle of conger eel’ which I thought sounded rather sophisticated and très Francais (pretentious? moi?) .

Turns out that ‘poêle’ simply means ‘pan’ – but I was still impressed by the name and had the basic ingredients sat in the fridge so I cracked on.


The bit I thought that would be most straight forward was removing the silvery grey skin from the eel but this was actually quite tricky. It wouldn’t easily peel away, so working a sharp knife under the skin for a good five minutes was required, freeing up about a centimetre of skin at a time. Once finished I was rewarded with a firm, fleshy white lump of eel but with evidence of quite a few bones (both in the centre of the steak and around the edges). Still, ignoring this potential choking hazard, I pressed on – inserting very thin slices of garlic into deep cuts made into the eel before wrapping two slices of dry cured streaky bacon around it and securing with string.

Then into a cast iron ‘poêle’, containing a good lump of sizzling butter, I added diced up celery (one stick), carrot batons (half a big carrot cut into little sticks), four or five chopped shallots and two whole cloves of garlic. You then stick the lid on for five mins and then put in the eel/bacon parcel, turning it a few times in the butter. Add salt and pepper and a bit more butter if it looks a bit dry and stick in a hot oven, lid on, for 25 minutes – taking it out and turning the parcel over in the butter a couple of times as it cooks. You then check the seasoning and return to the oven for ten minutes uncovered. And that’s it – no wine, no stock or herbs – and what you get is a very pleasant buttery, fishy and bacon flavoured sauce, nicely cooked vegetables and a tasty, meaty fish/bacon centrepiece. The bones were a bit annoying but that’s a small sacrifice when you consider how simple the dish was to throw together and how well it went down with a glass of dry French white wine sat watching CSI. Highly recommended - and I’ll be trying more Rick/fish market culinary experiments over the months ahead which will be reported here.

Betcha can’t wait…..