Remembering Nana again

I've been spending a fair amount of time as of late, OUT of the kitchen. Yes, Guy and I have been doing more than our share of getting out and partying, so I really don't have much to tell you about what's going on in the kitchen. So, when in doubt, a story from my cooking past.

I had actually forgotten this story. I was reminded of it when Chris recalled a story that I had told him which involved a large carp (you'll get that one, eventually), but remembered it as involving eel. Well, I DO have an eel story. A recurring one.

Everyone associates Easter with lamb. There's always something associated with lamb around the pascal feast. Especially amongst Italians, who can argue endlessly about the appropriate age of the lamb roast, all the way up to mutton.

Well, not everyone eats lamb. Or at least, when I was a kid, that was true. Lamb was expensive. VERY expensive, compared to other things. And there were many times when the money just did not stretch far enough to provide lamb, for what was, at times, a very bustling, large family. And when that happened, it fell to Nana to come up with something else. And it was always eel. Not the little, tiny eels that you find in Spanish restaurants at about 100.00 an ounce, or the medium sized ones you will see in Japanese restaurants on the sushi plate. Oh, no, these were BIG eels. Big enough to feed ten people. But I should explain: eel is very strong tasting, and very rich. I haven't seen anyone selling eels that size anymore, and I suspect that they've either been fished out, or they all go to Asia or to Europe. But back then, I would go with Nana, on Good Friday, to our local fisherman. He had a tank of live eels. Nana would study them carefully, and then settle on one. The fish monger would take it off and dispatch it (unlike chickens, Nana never killed her own fish). And we'd bring it home, and prep it on Holy Saturday.

In some older books, you see references to women filling gowns "like eels." Eelskin is very tight on the animal. But you have to skin it to cook it Italian style, or at least the way Nana did. And that's where the teamwork would come in. Ok, ready for this? What she would do is hold the eel up against a wall, and then she'd take a large nail out of her mouth, and BANG a hammer on it, right through the head of the eel. That way, it was fixed to the wall for what we did next.

Then, she would take her sharpest knife (a little tiny thing she called "her secret sister"), and run a horizontal cut at the base where the head met the neck, in a circle. My turn was next. The two of us would each grab a plier and stand at the side, and pull, pull, PULL..... You have to have the image of a slightly overweight - ok, MORE than slightly overweight kid, and a woman in her late 50s, standing there, with a snake between them, pulling the skin off.

It would take a while, but we did it. The skinned eel did not look very appetizing, and it still needed to be cleaned. Nana would excuse me for that, so I can honestly say that eviscerating an eel is not something I know how to do. She did it herself. Then she'd stuff it with a combination of various tasty things: I remember bread crumbs, garlic, olive oil, dried spices, raisins, and maybe some other things. If we had them, there would be pignoli nuts, but that was rare.

She'd bake it for a long time, and then serve big slices of it with whatever vegetables we were having. My sisters were grossed out by it, but I have to say, I LOVED that dish. Maybe even more than lamb. And we only had it once a year.

Times changed, and we began to have more money. And lamb every Easter. One year, I went into the kitchen and asked Nana if we were ever going to have eel again. I remember that she was working, and she smiled and said "No, dear. We're having lamb. Like fancy people." And I answered her by asking if fancy people ever ate things that they liked. What I remember next is that she stopped what she was doing, looked at me, and smiled even bigger. "You have a poor person's taste. That's good. You'll always have enough money for food. Most people aren't that lucky." And I remember she did something Nana almost never did. She kissed me three times: once on the top of my head, once on my cheek, and once on my lips (Nana took great faith in things that came in threes).

And as years went by, she and I ate "poor food" together: tripe. Fava beans. Breast of veal. Spaghetti with bread crumbs. But we never sat down to eel again. I guess I always have had money for food, and I'm not sure if I have "poor person's taste," but what I do know is that I sure miss that stuffed eel.

Surely , reader, you have some reminiscence of a dish that you grew up on that brngs up strong memories, be they good or bad. Isn't it time to share? Sharing is one of the big themes of Annlena's kitchen, so how about your own story ? I would love to read them.