It was 1994, and I was 10 years old and hungry. It’s not as if there was no food in camp. We definitely had hot dogs and beans and such, but I never was too much into that kind of camp cuisine.
My dad, Hunter, was always a champion of catch-and-cook meals. In fact, when all of the other dads in our outdoors group (The Trailblazers) were cooking macaroni and cheese from a box, my dad would be making clam sauce spaghetti with sun dried tomatoes. I know he did it because we were, and still are, hardcore “foodies,” but he also loved making gourmet food that made everyone else in camp jealous.
That evening in the early 1990s, Hunter had an emergency call that he could not ignore. He asked me and my older brother Justin if we wanted to leave camp early or stay and catch a ride back with one of the other dads in our group. We were adamant that we would not leave the seashore until we absolutely had to return to civilization. So my dad left us in good hands with our friend Craig, but drove off preoccupied and took all of the food with him.
These were the days before cell phones so we had no way of contacting him. We had some hot dogs that night, but the next morning no one else was up and we were hungry. I had caught a few sizable eels the day before with the other boys at low tide and, this morning, I refused to budge out of the comfort of my sleeping bag. When I finally did rise to greet the day, it was to the smell of eels basted with teriyaki sauce smoking on a driftwood fire.
The only food my dad had left was a bottle of teriyaki sauce. While I slept, my brother and our good buddy Joe snuck away from camp at dawn and caught five eels in the rocky intertidal zone. They added kindling to a still smoldering ember in the fire pit from the night before and had teriyaki eels smoking by 7 a.m. That eel breakfast on the North Coast goes down in history as one of my all time favorites. Needless to say, we have been harvesting monkeyface eels for decades and the subject of this article is just what to do with them once you catch them.
The monkeyface prickleback (Cebidichthys violaceus), commonly known as the monkeyface eel, is not actually an eel at all, but a type of finfish that has evolved an eel-like bauplan and adapted to the shallow rocky reefs of the North Coast. These “eels” cannot be purchased from the store, as there is no commercial market aimed at taking them. As a result, if you want to try this recipe you will need to catch one yourself. (See “Get Out,” page 20.) This recipe relies on fillets from eels of a little over a foot in length. Any smaller and monkeyface eels simply don’t have enough meat to bother with.
Once caught, these eels are pretty tricky to fillet as they are quite hard to keep hold of. You can get around this issue by wearing a cloth glove, or keeping hold of the eel’s jaw with a pair of pliers. When filleting, I normally remove the skin from fish, but in the case of the monkeyface, my advice is to be sure to keep the skin on as it is simply fantastic once smoked and pan fried.
Monkeyface eels can be prepared in numerous ways but one of my preferred recipes is as simple as it is delicious, requiring only a smoker or grill and an appetite. While eel is absolutely fantastic grilled with teriyaki sauce and rolled up in sushi, smoked eel on its own is also an absolutely delicious treat. After a brief marinade, these eel fillets can be smoked at low heat (approximately 150 degrees) for about four to six hours.
Smoking — a method of cooking and curing fish and game that dates back thousands of years — imparts an incredible flavor to food, but the smoke itself is actually a natural preservative as well. Each wood species yields its own unique flavor to smoking. I often use fruit wood for smoking terrestrial game as dense wood from apple or plum impart incredible fruity notes to such foods. However, when smoking eel and fish, I prefer a lighter, mild-flavored wood. As my good buddy Martijn informed me, in the Netherlands, eel are traditionally smoked with hazel or hickory, but I am partial to our local alder wood.
Alders grow along most lowland riparian corridors on the North Coast and alder wood has been the traditional wood of choice for smoking salmon among many Yurok families for generations. Alder-smoked eel gets two thumbs up in my opinion. You can gather your own alder wood if you choose. Just be sure you select dead and dry wood to chip up. After chipping your alder, soak it in water for at least 20 minutes. The object here is to let the wood smoke and prevent if from flaring up and burning.
Smoked Monkeyface Eel
Ingredients:
Salt (to taste)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 teaspoon chili-garlic sauce
2 teaspoons honey
½ cup water (plus more for brining eel and soaking wood chips)
Alder chips
Recipe: Soak the alder wood chips in water for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, brine your eel fillets in salt water (about 2 tablespoons for two cups of water) for 15 minutes. Get the smoker going and add the wood chips. Place your fillets in the smoker and let them smoke for four to six hours. If you don’t have a smoker, you can get a small amount of coals going in a barbecue and push them to one side. Place the eel fillets on the opposite side of the grill out of direct heat. Add your wet alder chips to the coals and let them smoke in the barbecue. Close all of the vents and monitor the eel and coals closely to be sure the wood chips do not dry and flame up and the eel is removed from the grill once fully cooked and smoked.
Once the eel comes out of the smoker, sauté in 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce, 2 teaspoons honey and ½ a cup of water. When this is reduced to a thick syrup, add two diced garlic cloves. Now add the smoked eel fillets and simmer them on both sides to absorb all of the flavors and caramelize the sauce on the eel (about 5 minutes). Remove the eel from the sauce and let it cool.
Now serve it any way you please. This eel goes great in sushi or simply on a cracker with cream cheese mixed with diced green onions.
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This article appears in Oh, Mercy.
It’s depressing to read an article glorifying cooking over a driftwood fire and backyard smoking. All wood smoke is polluting and toxic, but driftwood fires are particularly problematic. Burning driftwood creates dioxins, which are some of the most toxic chemicals you can release into the environment. They bioaccumulate and are potent carcinogenic endocrine disrupters.
Backyard smokers are awful, especially for neighbors who have lung, heart or other health conditions. Nobody who cares for the people living near them should set up a smoker in their yard. Even if you only smoke food in your backyard once in a while, it can still make some neighbors very ill.
Besides, smoking foods makes them more carcinogenic. In the words of Dr H. Garber of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment:
“the growing epicurial fad of smoking food represents a huge setback for public health, and a personal choice that is one of the most unhealthy of culinary endeavors. Wood smoke is probably the most toxic type of pollution the average person ever inhales. Burning 10 pounds of wood for one hour releases as many toxic chemicals as 6,000 packs of cigarettes. Wood smoke creates free radicals that are active 40 times longer than those found in secondhand cigarette smoke and 12 times more prone to cause cancer. Wood smoke easily penetrates the indoor air of homes nearby and, with no indoor storm to blow it out, can linger there long after the smoked ribs have disappeared.
If an expensive restaurant advertised that they let their ribs sit on top of 6,000 smoldering packs of Marlboros for hours on end, would you be standing in line to get in? How about if they bragged that their meat had been saturated with diesel truck exhaust until mouth watering, tender and juicy? The toxic chemicals in wood smoke are as harmful if ingested, as if they are inhaled, causing chromosomal damage, immune system suppression, and multiple types of cancer, i.e. pancreatic, colorectal and prostate.” (Op-ed: Governor should burn bill that puts special interests ahead of public health, Salt Lake Tribune, March 7, 2017)
Curious Chip posted:
“”It’s depressing to read an article glorifying cooking over a driftwood fire and backyard smoking. All wood smoke is polluting and toxic, but driftwood fires are particularly problematic. Burning driftwood creates dioxins, which are some of the most toxic chemicals you can release into the environment. They bioaccumulate and are potent carcinogenic endocrine disrupters.
Backyard smokers are awful, especially for neighbors who have lung, heart or other health conditions. Nobody who cares for the people living near them should set up a smoker in their yard. Even if you only smoke food in your backyard once in a while, it can still make some neighbors very ill.
Besides, smoking foods makes them more carcinogenic. In the words of Dr H. Garber of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment:
“the growing epicurial fad of smoking food represents a huge setback for public health, and a personal choice that is one of the most unhealthy of culinary endeavors. Wood smoke is probably the most toxic type of pollution the average person ever inhales. Burning 10 pounds of wood for one hour releases as many toxic chemicals as 6,000 packs of cigarettes. Wood smoke creates free radicals that are active 40 times longer than those found in secondhand cigarette smoke and 12 times more prone to cause cancer. Wood smoke easily penetrates the indoor air of homes nearby and, with no indoor storm to blow it out, can linger there long after the smoked ribs have disappeared.
If an expensive restaurant advertised that they let their ribs sit on top of 6,000 smoldering packs of Marlboros for hours on end, would you be standing in line to get in? How about if they bragged that their meat had been saturated with diesel truck exhaust until mouth watering, tender and juicy? The toxic chemicals in wood smoke are as harmful if ingested, as if they are inhaled, causing chromosomal damage, immune system suppression, and multiple types of cancer, i.e. pancreatic, colorectal and prostate.” (Op-ed: Governor should burn bill that puts special interests ahead of public health, Salt Lake Tribune, March 7, 2017)””
Chip, I’m glad I’m not your neighbor. You would not have these issues if you were of an earlier generation. Most pollutants come from automobiles and power generators so unless you give up cars and electricity you are a hippocrit. Also you can find a study or statistic to prove just about anything so take your goody two shoes pie in the sky holier than thou attitude and shove them where the sun don’t shine.
Actually, Stoner, you are wrong. Far more pollution, especially in Humboldt, comes from wood burning than from cars or industry. According to the California Air Resources Board, electric generation is responsible for .10 tons/day of fine particle pollution in the county. The vast majority of that comes from biomass — .09 tons/day — because wood burning in any form is hugely polluting. The exhaust emissions from all of the vehicles on the road combined in the county — semi trucks, buses, passenger cars, diesels, etc — emit, all together, .14 tons/day of fine particle pollution in Humboldt County. Residential wood burning, however, is responsible for approximately one whole ton/day of fine particle pollution in the county. This doesn’t include backyard burns — just wood stoves and fireplaces.
Wood burning is hugely polluting, and many studies have shown that the pollution from residential wood burning is responsible for a range of chronic illnesses and a higher risk of premature death, especially from cardiovascular and pulmonary causes. It’s not a coincidence that our county’s lung health and cardiovascular death rates are dismal. The particles from wood burning are in the smallest size range — small enough to pass through the lungs and into the bloodstream, where they carry toxins throughout the body and raise inflammation levels. This is a large and growing research field — fine particle pollution kills, especially fine particle pollution from wood burning.
Also, the closer you are to a source of pollution, the more of it you inhale. If someone is burning wood or using a smoker right next to your house, you will breathe in way more of that than you would from something some cars are putting out further away.
Wood smoke is secondhand smoke — it has most of the same toxic chemicals as tobacco smoke, and is just as unhealthy (actually, it’s worse — wood smoke particulates have been found in toxicology studies to be as much as 30 times more carcinogenic than those from tobacco, and more mutagenic than those from diesel).
Attitudes haven’t caught up with the science yet, but they will. The peer-reviewed research on this is too vast and comprehensive to be ignored much longer, even by people who think their smoked ribs are more important than a sick or elderly neighbor next door.
I love to smoke the meats that I get from my environmental gatherings. My neighbors love the smell of the smoke. I love that it lingers in the yard for a few days.
Smokers are great!!!!