A tasty dish of baked eel, using with sour and sweet fish sauce, so delicious!
It has been a long time since I had a chance to enjoy the eels made by my grandpa.
I still remember the time when grandpa used to catch eels, especially on rainy days since there would be a lot of eels those days as he told us.
In my family, no one could make delicious tasty dishes from eels like grandpa.
From all the eel dishes made by his skillful hands, I enjoy the baked eels most!
When there was a batch of fat eels, he also prepared a lot of spices as well as food processing to make the dish such as saffron, lard, lemon leaves, dry garlic, ferment, oil, along with fish sauce, salt, sugar, lemon, chili, peppercorn, dill.
He taught me how to clean eels quickly just by putting them in a pan, rubbing salt in about 10 to 15 minutes. After the eels die, take them out, then using various kinds of rough leaves such as melon leaves, pumpkin leaves or dry straw to pluck off the viscosity. We can also use vinegar, lemon or kumquat to clean the eels, which can make their meat cleaner and more flavored.
After that, using a sharp knife to poke at the navel, cut from tail to head, pull out the bowel. He also carefully told us not to wash eels with water after cutting them or else eels would be stinking, just using clean papers or soft tower to dry the eels.
Next, slice the eels, cut them into pieces, and embalm them with salt, garlic, saffron in 15 minutes. Then pour ferment water, sugar and fish sauce, toss and wait 15 more minutes. Cut the lard into thin slices.
In the final step, bake the eels, put them on the grill, sprinkle with lemon leaves and peppercorn, put the lard in the middle, and then put on another piece of eel.
When baking, sometimes we need to apply oil on the eels, turn them over again and again. Eat when the eels were still hot, using with fish sauce adding sugar, lemon, chili, garlic and vegetable like salad and dill.
Grandpa used to tell me that eating eels was really good for health, especially for heart decongest, it could also reduce aches and pains as well as malnutrition.
And it has been six years already, since the day grandpa was gone, no one could make the best eels like that.
