Consider the Eel: A Natural and Gastronomic History
- Book Review,
by Richard Schweid
From Publishers Weekly
While Spanish, German, Irish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese and especially Japanese people place Anguillae well above salmon in their cuisines, Americans, by and large, consider eels to be bait. Thus, North American estuaries have the best remaining migratory wild eel populations; that fact provides a good foundation for a light science travelogue shuttling back and forth between eel capitals on both sides of the Atlantic. Schweid (The Cockroach Papers) tries to fill in the gaps in the eel's astonishing natural history and tie that to sketches of fishery traditions, folklore, literary excerpts and reportage (beware the natural history that includes this many ingredients), mostly by focusing on the erratic transatlantic economy that eel supply (here) and demand (there) creates. Schweid visits five of the traditional eeling waters in Europe, but mostly he's concerned with recording the yarns of North Carolina's Outer Banks eel-fishing culture, where small-scale U.S. "eelers" operating inshore catch and ship tons of wriggling eels to Europe and Japan. Schweid is searching hard for a handle on his slimy, reclusive subject, but even science is not much help: the migratory Atlantic genus has been so resistant to study that even strong commercial imperatives (immature eels have fetched $500 a pound) have not yielded a true eel aquaculture. An overview of such an enigmatic creature that ranges over a huge ocean and inshore ecology is all that can be expected from this slim book; still, anyone with a curiosity about the sea will find Schweid's taste of the eel strangely appealing. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A coveted food in Japan and a readily consumed item in Europe, the eel has all but disappeared from American tables in homes and restaurants. Yet it is still fished here and sold to Europeans and Japanese. Journalist Schweid (Catfish and the Delta) helps us realize what a strange and fascinating little fish the eel is. It breeds in the Sargasso Sea, a stretch of Atlantic waters between Bermuda and the Azores; the young then migrate to freshwater creeks and rivers, where they may live for years before migrating back to the Sargasso Sea to mate. This migration pattern, the opposite of that of salmon, is shared only with the mullet, and how eels navigate the distances remains a mystery. They are picky eaters, have a sense of smell equal to that of dogs, and appear to be a barometer of pollution levels in water systems. In addition, eels are the only farmed fish that we have been unsuccessful in coaxing to reproduce in captivity. Schweid writes with clarity and enthusiasm, combining elementary biology with recipes from England, Europe, and America, historical notes on fishing and cooking, and present-day interviews with fishers and others. Unlike Mark Kurlansky's expansive Cod, this title's narrow scope (it reads like an extended magazine article) limits its appeal to large public libraries and fishery collections. Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences, Research Triangle Park, NC Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Eels, those strange, snakelike fish, have an even stranger life cycle. As Schweid reveals in this engaging look at an important food fish, every eel in North America and Europe begins its life in the Sargasso Sea. Eel larvae are carried on ocean currents to the mouths of rivers, where they transform into tiny "glass eels" and migrate upstream. There they stay for up to 20 years, when they return to the Sargasso to breed. The marvelous thing about this life cycle is how little we actually know about this fish--adult eels have never been found in the Sargasso, and we don't even know if eels are born male or female. Schweid delves into both the science and the folklore surrounding this fish as he takes the reader from to the Basque country of Spain, where cooperatives of eel fishermen weathered the worst years of Franco's dictatorship, to Virginia, as young eels are captured and grown to market size. A chapter of eel recipes whets the appetite for a fish not much consumed in the U.S. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Book News, Inc.
Combining travelogue, natural history, folklore, and culinary history, the author explores the world in search of knowledge about the eel and human relations to the fish. He looks at how humans prepare and consume eel from coastal America to Europe and Asia. This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 2002.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
New York Times Book Review
"Everything you always wanted to know about eels.... Will delight anyone with a taste for natural history."
Library Journal
"Schweid helps us realize what a strange and fascinating little fish the eel is.... [He] writes with clarity and enthusiasm."
New York Times Book Review 02/15/04
"Surprising revelations...will delight anyone with a taste for natural history."
Seattle Times 02/29/04
"Schweid gives readers the skinny on 'one of our oldest and least understood gifts from the sea.'"
Raleigh News & Observer 02/18/04
"Fills in the blanks about eels...with revelations about their prodigious migratory instincts and human efforts to hunt them down."
New Scientist 03/06/04
"Consider the Eel mixes slippery tales with fabulous recipes."
Curled Up with a Good Book April 2004
"An immensely readable and fun book...This is intellectual dalliance and scientific armchair dilettante reading at its very best."
Book Description
Once a staple of the American diet, the eel has, with the exception of upscale fusion restaurants and sushi houses, disappeared from our menus. In Consider the Eel, Richard Schweid reveals the eel's amazing natural history and opens our eyes to the global importance and demand for this curious fish by taking us from the coastal backwoods of America to England, Spain, China, Japan, and Italy-where the eel is a delicacy that can be found grilled, smoked, stewed, jellied, skewered, fried, baked, sautŽed, and even cooked into an omelet. In graceful prose, Schweid raises the eel from riverbed and pond bottom and serves up a delectable look at one of our oldest and least understood gifts from the sea.
About the Author
Richard Schweid was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and now lives in Barcelona, Spain, where he is senior editor of the magazine Barcelona Metropolitan. His books include Catfish and the Delta, Hot Peppers, and The Cockroach Papers.
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