The old Doner Kebab quest,solved perhaps?

[Ianinfrance]

Hi Phil,

Yes indeed. I remember seeing them on sale in Borough market over Christmas, and blinking more than once when I saw their price.

Mind you, is it more expensive than smoked wild salmon - if one can even find such a thing any more?

(Edited once to turn into English)

[wheels]

Smoked wild salmon is still available...

...and yes, it is dearer than the eel.

Phil

[Bangermuncher]

Not having visited a true London Pie & Mash shop for several years,seeing as I don't live there anymore,though I did have someone bring me some down from Islington,I won't be asking them to do that again

I have to wonder how many eels they sell now?
Given the scarcity and changing tastes,especially in London which is either yuppified or infested with a "diverse culture".
How many can they get and is there still a market for them in the Pie & Mash shops?

Can they still have trays of live eels?

The Wild Gourmets,8pm tonight on the food channel are in Wales,they'll be doing something with eels and they'll have to catch them first.
I won't be around when it's on but I've set it to record.
I can't wait to watch it.
Last night they caught and cooked up pike.
And here is about the only thing I'll agree with the French on,pike is a wonderful eating fresh water fish.
Not eaten it since I was a kid as I ever only caught jack pike when I fished but you were supposed to kill the big fellas,I never caught one big enough for the pot.

[culinairezaken]

here in the netherlands we smoke a LOT of eel. indeed very expensive and really nice flavour. The biggest "lake" (it was a sea, they build a dam now it's fresh water) was the place where they caught most of the eel. There are so few of them left that it's now prohibited to fish for them at all!

Pike is a nice fish, especially in terrines, but to sweet and sickly (don't know if this is the right word, google translate ) for me!

you can't get any pie and mash here, people start to walk away when you talk about steak and kidney pie. sometimes i'd like to move towards the uk!

[Bangermuncher]

Pike is a very strong taste,to be honest I can't remember it that much as it was so long ago and I was a kid,I remember I enjoyed it but I was never much of a keen coarse angler,then and now I saw no point in catching something you weren't going to eat.
Everyone was fishing carp and tench,bottom feeders.
I wanted to catch the predators and my real prey was the Perch,but I never did catch one big enough to eat and always put them back.
To this day I still want to eat Perch.

Eels being so endangered it makes me wonder how a recent cookery show got away with serving a panel of judges elvers?
I mean I refuse to eat cod because of depleted stocks,I go for haddock instead,and good old dogfish,huss as it's been called for years.
I still call it rock salmon.
And if you've never made good old fish and chips with a bag of sprats or fishcakes with pilchards you're missing something in life.

I'm reminded of an old joke.
Two parrots sitting on a perch,one says to the other,
"Can you smell fish?"

[wheels]

BM

In the Jura region of France (and maybe elswhere) they treat perch like we would whitebait or spratts - that way they don't need to be large.

One of the problems with eels is that even when farmed the elvers/spawn (or whatever it is) has to come from the wild. Eating them seems to me like wanting to kill white rhino or any other endangered species, but while the price is high unscrupulous people will still catch and sell them. The Severn fishery is now plagued by thuggish gangs who couldn't give a damn.

Is it true that Jack Pike don't have the forked bones that the larger ones do?

Phil

[Bangermuncher]

Is it true that Jack Pike don't have the forked bones that the larger ones do?
Phil

In all honesty I don't know but I've heard the "Y" bones haven't quite developed yet and begin to do so from behind the head.
But when I was angling you were supposed to put a jack pike back so I never found out.
I've no doubt some people did.
A bit of an anomoly is that if you caught an adult pike you were supposed to kill it and dispose of it.
But if you saw one basking it was absolutely against the rules to foul hook it.
Some people used to throw a treble hook in it's side and gaff it.
Not exactly sporting.
The biggest I "nearly" caught was basking,I was about 12 and the fishing warden was right behind me so I asked him about it.
This was in old gravel pits and the pike used to like a sunken barge where they could lurk for their prey.
This old pike apparently was well known and a bit of a monster,caught fairly he'd have been a competition winner,he was a big bugger.
But he was old and diseased with some kind of green mould growing on one side of him.
He used to come up to the bank where you could see him clearly and feed on groundbait or anything else the anglers gave him.
On this day he wasn't taking bait or eating anything,the warden said he was on his last legs.
I would have loved to catch that pike then but he had to be "the one that got away",and he was probably three times my age then!
And I wasn't going to foul hook him.
Nor was anybody else.
That was an intelligent fish,he saw where you were fishing and went there to get fed!
Weird thing is I caught a few Zander of decent size.
Some idiot introduced them into the waters.
But you had to kill those too and I never tried to eat them.
Apparently they're pretty good?
But I was kind of obsessed by catching the elusive edible perch of a decent size,never did.
Then I went shark fishing but that's a completely different story.
Let's just say nobody went hungry that day

I wouldn't dream of catching or eating anything endangered.
When potatoes go on that list I'm in big trouble

[wheels]

Zander's very good - the nearest I've had to a sea fish - they used to farm them near to me.

Phil

[Bangermuncher]

Zander's very good - the nearest I've had to a sea fish - they used to farm them near to me.

Phil

When I was fishing they were considered a pest.
This is an old article but still along the lines of what we were told at the time.
http://www.fishingmagic.com/features/re ... 10248.html
I wouldn't want to eat farmed Zander.
I'd be happy to catch it wild and eat it though.

Work this one out.
1963 someone introduces a foreign species everyone wants to kill,two decades later everyone wants them,two decades+ after that nobody can get them because they're all being sent back to where they came from in the first place.
Exported to the the EU.
I'd best quit while I'm ahead.

Can't help thinking how well Zander would go with Pie & Mash though instead of eels.
Jellied Zander doesn't quite have that ring to it but I bet it tastes beautiful.

[wheels]

It's a brave man that suggests messing with pie 'n' eel!

[Bangermuncher]

It's a brave man that suggests messing with pie 'n' eel!

Then I'm either brave or daft or both.
Definitely daft.
What would YOU suggest in the absence of the eel.
Bearing in mind it has to be in the same price range as eels used to be.
Meaning cheap.
And have plenty of flavour.
And preferably be a freshwater fish.
And before anyone suggests Lampreys I'd just rather not go there!

[wheels]

Maybe one of the marine eels?

[saucisson]

Conger is nice, but fails the freshwater test

[Bangermuncher]

Well they bombed our chip shops but didn't hit the crucial targets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_vVLzptK1o
A society dedicated to Pie & Mash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmKc7OIzVoo
This one shows you what I meant about the old boys(and ladies)taking their teeth out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzUOoss6x3g

[spudie]

Hi old timers, I happened to drop back here as we all do (I hope) to see what's new and exciting.
Being an avid Meat and Fish Pie lover from way back I found this extremely interesting. Well worth a read. Hoping there is something in there to rekindle home made pie making . I know I'm back in there trying some of the recipes mentioned - god bless Oddly.
rgds spudie Oz