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< | HOW TO CATCH, PREPARE, AND EAT AN AMERICAN EEL (JANG-EO DUPBAP/UNAGI-DON) | >
> | Chairman | | | | |
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< | -- By DanLEe - 25 Feb 2021 | >
> | -- By DanLEe - May 19 | | | | |
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> | After my 1L finals, I met up with Dom, old friend of mine who had taken on a position at Sullivan & Cromwell during the pandemic, and was assigned to, among other things, a proceeding where Volkswagen is the defendant client. The firm is still dealing with the legal fallout from the infamous 2015 diesel emissions fraud, battling a number of claims from governmental and private entities in a variety of jurisdictions. By all accounts, S&C is doing a commendable job at minimizing Volkswagen’s liability in these courts. | | | | |
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< | Introduction | >
> | Dom was very depressed. It was a Tuesday evening, and he was half in the bag by the time I arrived at the bar. His girlfriend, a chemist working R&D for a tire company, looked bored and greeted me listlessly. | | | | |
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< | Memories of Going to Catch Eels | >
> | “I’m dying out there,” Dom said. “Emails to and from people I detest, all day. Tedious busywork that makes me want to melon-ball my eyes out, in service of THE CLIENTS, who, frankly, don’t deserve a hair off my ass. Remember, back in school, I made that big stink about the paper that we used not being recycled, and they brought in that gray mulchy crap for all internal memoranda because I wouldn’t stop? I thought I was doing something. And now look. Me, a little paper monkey for a fraudulent, polluting, megacorporation founded by, ha, literal Nazis. And don’t—” here he waved shut my opening mouth “—don’t tell me it’s because working from home sucks. Not being there in person just gives me… clarity. About what I’m doing.” His bleary eyes latched onto a tube top across the room, and he was almost derailed. | | | | |
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< | When I was a young boy, I, like many other young boys, went fishing with my father. We would drive north from North Jersey for two to three hours into the heart of the Catskills. Not far into Rockland County, the road becomes lonely and surrounded by dense forest, and the air seems to change very quickly. Our hearts always lightened the farther north we went; I knew this although we always fell very silent an hour or so into the drive. | >
> | “I read about this guy in college,” he started up again, “He wrote about this factory where they’d make pins. You’d have one guy cutting the metal, some other guy sharpening it. Someone putting on the heads, another painting them, another packaging them. In sum: eighteen schmucks to make a single pin, but when they were put together they would make, like, ten times more pins than eighteen guys each making their own pins. I remember that blew my mind in college.” | | | | |
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> | “Adam Smith,” said the girlfriend. | | | | |
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< | After the interstate and the exit and the winding blacktop and the winding gravel and finally the winding dirt road, we come to the spot. The spot is next to a lake or a slow-moving, deepish river, although this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Eels are hardy creatures, and they’ll go most anywhere they please.
My father and I caught and ate eels and catfish because his father caught eels and catfish. He would always be surprised when the white folks we sometimes fished next to would throw them back or give them to us. They would go on casting for bass or trout or perch, because eels are dirty bottom feeders. | >
> | “Huh?” Dom glanced at her, annoyed. He half-scanned the bar, as if he would find Adam Smith among one of the Stevens kids crowding the place. He seemed dangerously close to forgetting his point again. | | | | |
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> | “So you were thinking about that and felt like you were one of those guys,” I offered. “Sharpening or cutting ten hours a day.” | | | | |
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> | “Yeah.” His face brightened as he retraced his steps. “Actually, no. I feel like I’m a chair for one of those guys.” | | | | |
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< | Preparing to Catch the Eel | >
> | “A chair?” | | | | |
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< | Materials | >
> | “Yeah, like I’m bent over and an associate pin-factory worker is sitting on my back for eighty hours a week. Tedious as all hell, but just difficult and undignified and uncomfortable enough for me to stay excruciatingly aware of my unceasing predicament.” He sat back, pleased with the analogy. “And the pins that the guy sitting on me helps make, the pins are all sold to bad people who promptly stick them under fingernails. Children’s fingernails.” | | | | |
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< | To catch an eel, you want to use a shortish, medium-power rod with a ten-pound line. The short rod and thick line give you more leverage and power against the eel, which will rage and fight like a bull when it realizes it has been caught. Do not use a bob, because eels will not feed near the surface, especially in the daytime. A sinker will work fine, but a split shot (essentially a series of ball bearings clamped to the fishing line) will reduce your chances of getting caught on a log or other debris. | >
> | “Well, I’m sure the chair-guy doesn’t get paid nearly as much as you do,” I said, flicking his sleeve. His jacket was Balenciaga. | | | | |
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< | Location | >
> | Dom frowned, looking down. “No. He would not.” | | | | |
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< | Fish at night. Eels are shy creatures that rarely feed during the day, and they are often found in muddy waters, tangles of underwater foliage and debris, and holes within the lakebed or riverbed. They love to feed when it is hot and humid; on one summer night after a day of thunderstorms, I caught thirteen eels on one rod. | >
> | The girlfriend finished her second Moscow Mule with a clack. “You’re alienated.” | | | | |
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< | Catching the Eel | >
> | “Yeah,” said Dom. “Huh?” | | | | |
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< | Where to Cast | >
> | “Didn’t you read Marx?” | | | | |
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< | Hook a nightcrawler and cast as far as you can. Eels love the deep and spend most of their lives wriggling through the muddy, dark waters closest to their hiding spots. Because of their love for their homes, they tend not to venture too far from them, even to feed. If an eel does not bite your crawler inside of ten minutes, it is because you have cast too far from any of them. | >
> | “Oh, Jesus, take me now.” Dom scooted out of the booth. “Bathroom.” He took the long way, which took him past the tube top. | | | | |
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< | How to Fight | >
> | “Aren’t you a chemist?” I asked the girlfriend, whose name it was much too late to ask for. | | | | |
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< | An eel has a small mouth, so it will not gobble your bait up greedily like a bass or pike. If it comes, it will come with a cautious nibble that can be felt in one of three ways. The first is to shine a flashlight on the tip of the rod and watch the end. This method is impractical because it will attract every fly, gnat, mosquito, moth, and beetle in a square mile, and you’ll end up spending more time batting them away than fishing. The second is to close your eyes and try to feel the subtlest hints of movement in the rod. This method works, but sometimes will put you to sleep. The third, and my favorite, is to crack a glowstick and rubber-band it to the tip of the rod. In any case, wait for two nibbles. The first means the eel is curious. The second means that he is hungry. When the second comes, jerk the rod straight back over your shoulder so the hook “sets,” or pierces his lip or the roof of his mouth. | >
> | “Yeah,” she said, starting on Dom’s drink. “And you know what’s funny? This was my dream job. My reach.” | | | | |
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< | The eel has more fight in it than a bottle of bad tequila. It’s a 20-30 inch band of writhing, angry, slippery muscle. Once you’ve set the hook, the eel will fight every second until you’ve hit him over the head with a big rock. Just keep pulling and reeling. Don’t stop, because the eel will catch its breath and craftily wrap itself around something in the water and snap your line. Even as it’s coming out of the water, the eel will thrash and tangle itself in your line out of spite, which will be a huge pain to unravel when you’re preparing it. Mind you, you don’t have to prepare it right away. You can stick it in a bucket with some water or even in a plastic bag. Eels are much less delicate than, say, trout. | >
> | “Well, neither you nor Dom are exactly pin-factory workers. Or chairs.” | | | | |
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< | Preparing the Eel | >
> | “Well. I go to work and follow an OSAP, which is a handbook with all the Operational Standards And Procedures. I get fired if I don’t. I spend maybe a quarter of each day doing any real chemistry, and the formulas that I make are tested, tweaked, or, most often, discarded by someone else down Piscataway. The rare times my work actually gets to road-testing, I don’t care. What do I care about tires? I take the PATH.” She ordered another Mule. “You should check out my Etsy, though. I make these crocheted plushies. I know the guy that makes the yarn, even.” | | | | |
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< | An eels is hard to grab hold of, so when you are getting ready to prepare it, you should wet your hand and get some sand or dirt on it for traction. If you have a gaff, try to pin the eel down below the gills and get him at the base of his skull. If you don’t, this is where the big rock comes in.
Once he’s dead, make a slit from the anus to right below his gills. The skin is pretty tough, so you might want to take it off here if you don’t enjoy a little chewiness with your fish. It comes off like a tight shirtsleeve, although you might need to finagle with it a bit. Take out the guts by cutting the membranes between the bowels and the spine, then fillet it by running the blade parallel to its spine on either side. | >
> | Dom slid back in his seat, flushed. “Where the hell is my drink?” He gestured for the waiter. | | | | |
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< | You should have two long, beautiful fillets of white fishmeat. Cut them into slices about 4-6 inches long, then score them. Slather them in sweet-sour Unagi sauce, which should be available in a “World” or “Ethnic” aisle near you. All you have to do now is place them on a grill over an open fire (or a frying pan) until they turn a gorgeous crispy, golden-brown color. Place the slices over some steaming white rice, along with some danmuji (yellow radish). Eat. | >
> | “Dom,” I asked slowly, “Remember that time in high school when we went fishing with Chrissy and my dad?” | | | | |
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> | He laughed. “The eels! Yeah, of course. Your dad made that rice thing—what was it?” | | | | |
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In "A Child's Christmas in Wales" Dylan Thomas writes of a book "that told you all about the wasp, except why." That's the route to improvement here too. The writing is clear, but the idea that requires us to know what you are telling us in order to understand it is completely absent. Commitment to an idea cannot be demonstrated by ignoring it, so that's where the next draft should begin.
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> | “Jang-eo deop-bap,” I said.
“Yeah, that.” Dom turned to his girlfriend to show her the pictures of the eels he had caught, and suddenly, I was in the Catskills in the late autumn’s evening, hooking a nightcrawler onto a ten-pound line, casting it into the darkness. Watching the glowstick tied to the tip of the rod jerk and swish as I set the hook to fight the eel. Hearing my friends and my father exclaim at the size of the writhing mass as I set it on the ground.
“—these big, beautiful, white fillets. And we put them over the rice like, this, with the sauce. Dan,” said Dom, turning his attention to me, “forget the law. C’mon, drop out, and I’ll leave my gig too. We’ll open a restaurant next to the Beaver Kill. River-to-table in an hour, tops.”
He must have noticed the startled expression on my face because he started chuckling. I started laughing too. The Rihanna song playing ended, and there was a queer moment when our laughter sounded absurdly loud over the chatter of the bar, which made both of us laugh even harder. We left ten minutes later, and Dom paid the tab. | | |
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