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wolf eel recipe for the adventurous types,
wolf eel cooked in salt crust and served with tomato sauce and basil is a rare and exotic treat. With its strong crushing jaws, wolf eel is a vicious looking animal of the sea that feeds on crustaceans, mussels, clams, sea urchins, and some fishes giving it edible and tasty white flesh. Cooked whole in salt crust, wolf eel makes a splendid and ferocious display akin to the infamous artwork by British artist Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Serve this at a dinner party and your guests will definitely be mystified and intrigued. In this recipe, wolf eel is served with uncooked tomato sauce flavored with basil for a refreshing and tangy contrast to the subtly salty fish.
While
wolf eels look like mean monsters, they are actually friendly and curious, and are rarely aggressive; when they are, they can bite and inflict pain on humans. They can grow as long as 80 inches and as heavy as 41 pounds. They are usually found on stony bottom shelves or rocky reefs in the northern Pacific Ocean, from the Aleutian Islands and the Sea of Japan to northern California. Marine Biologist Milton Love notes that some North American tribes reserve wolf eels for the consumption of tribal healers and that the species are good to eat. Some say the flesh tastes similar to wild trout.
The tough skin of the wolf eel makes it hard to filet but makes it ideal for cooking in a salt crust because the edible white flesh is protected from the salt and absorbs only a minimum of the saltiness. This flavors the eel wonderfully and makes it perfectly moist, firm, and tender. The eel is completely encased in a salt and egg mixture, which is damp before cooking. During cooking, the salt dries out and forms a hard shell around the fish and easily breaks away in pieces.
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