Eel hunting is called eeling and is a popular sport practiced by eelers - people trained in catching eels and surviving the shock.

Although an electric eel can be mistaken for a snake, its more accurately classified as a fish, an aquatic vertebrate animal with scales that has a capacity to produce an electric field using specialized cells distributed throughout its body. The larger the eel, the greater the charge, serving as a major defense against predators and incapacitating prey up to 15 feet away.

Now, engineers from Yale University have designed a man made tool adapting the principles of the electric eel cell by not only replicating them but improving on their design. They claim that artificial versions of the eel’s electricity generating cells could be developed as a power source for medical implants and other tiny devices.

Other engineers of the new field of systems biology question if we really understand enough about how a cell produces electricity to do a better job of designing them than nature has.  In an experiment at the Kakamigahara institute, Japanese scientists wondered if it were possible to harness the eel’s power for economic use. They attached a conductive copper wire from a fish tank to a Christmas tree fully ornamented with lights. Every time the eel scraped against the wire, the tree lit up. Despite all this science, a more common place to find an eel is marinated and served on a sushi plate.

During the Roman Empire, a group of large carp like fish known as genus Barbus were domesticated in marble tanks under the bed of guests invited to lavish Roman Orgies  signifying their fascination with underwater life that led to aquariums. But, it wasn’t known until much later that goldfish like others in the Carp family are social animals who frequently become bored with their environment when left alone without other fish to interact. For them, a stark, un-embellished bowl of water just wont do because their inclination when happy is to be curious. In fact this quality is believed to have encouraged the development of elaborate fish tank rock formations, miniature sunken ships and the R2 Fish Training Kit. which made Albert the goldfish pictured above a member of the Guinness Book Of Records as the fish with the largest repertoire of tricks of any aquatic vertebrate with scales.

According to historical records, The concept of fish school, not to be confused with a school of fish was first founded by Dean and Kyle Pomerleau in 2004. Kyle who was seven years old at the time won two common goldfish at a school fair spending hours watching them for several weeks. He suspected that there was more going on in their brains then most people were willing to give them credit for. On a whim, he and his father decided to see if it was possible to train fish to do tricks using techniques frequently associated with  training dogs, cats, and circus animals.

In an attempt to give fish their just due as responsive pets rather than some kind of decoration at risk for being flushed down the toilet or eaten by a house cat, their scientific investigation led to the Fish School Training Manual, initially written in French. The basic principles set forth in the pamphlet are positive reinforcement and shaping which uses the fish’s innate curiosity to encourage behavior modification. After all, Kyle  claimed,  “Fish have often been served in various cultures as religious symbols, deities and the subject of art, books and films such as The Incredible Mr. Limpit,” a 1964 live action/animated film by Warner Brothers about a human who mysteriously turns into a talking fish and helps the US Navy defeat the Nazis using his “thrum,” an intense  noise that disrupts underwater  instruments and weapons long before Finding Nemo won the Oscar as best animated feature in 2005.

Suppose it were possible to make scrambled eggs without beating them first - perhaps a trivial concern - but when was the last time you cracked an egg without paying attention to what you were doing? It doesn’t really matter where the egg is struck, as long as it contains no shell.

Every now and then a double yolk appears and those become unusual events, especially when children are looking on, eagerly absorbing everything with awe struck attentiveness. To them it’s a magical event and how they interpret what they see can shape their personality and define the approach they will take to life. This may sound like a hefty claim, but each time an egg is successfully transformed into an omelet, it builds confidence, a celebration when it enhances the ability to focus, especially for children and multi-taskers who revel in cracking two, in both hands at the same time.

Creating a batter in a bowl is a rote expenditure of energy. Another approach would be to open the eggs directly into the heated pan, then using a fork, mixing the yolks and the whites together when they are in the process of solidifying, creating a unique variation of color and texture, as a small amount of milk or cream for the aristocrats is added with salt and pepper. This encourages risk-taking, an absorbing adventure each and every time the task is undertaken. Most important is not having to scrape them from the pan. An assurance of an experienced knowing hand, especially when one of the kids asks: “Why are some eggs white, and some brown?” Then a learner-ed parent can respond with a smile, “They can also be green.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_shells

Although The Nutritional Aspects Of Expanding Populations sounds like a worthy subject for serious study in Biochemistry and Nutrition especially when considering the impact of the large spike in population growth during the post war period and its sociological implications on the  baby boom generation, it became the basis for a landmark 1955 cinematic classic  about the development of a growth serum and how it could be used to solve the problem of overpopulation and world hunger, a neglected subject in the mid fifties.

The elixir depicted in this film adaptation is so potent its promise is in providing the complete nutritional needs of any growing organism, a claim overshadowed only by the myopic scientific experimentation focused solely on animal rather than plant life which could have made it more palatable for vegetarians and provide a sound basis for reducing cardio-vascular disease when coupled by increased exercise and the cessation of smoking.

The film is titled Tarantula and was directed by Jack Arnold and stars John Agar,  Leo J. Carroll and Mara Corday with an uncredited appearance of twenty-five year old Clint Eastwood as a jet pilot dropping napalm at the films’ climax. Arnold went on to direct The Incredible Shrinking Man two years later in 1957 considered by many as his masterpiece and  Eastwood became a multiple Oscar winning director.

In this scenario,  Professor Gerald Deemer  is a scientist with a just motive, a hero trying to avert food shortages which are predicted as a result of the world’s expanding population of two billion in 1955, a role passionately played by veteran character actor Leo J Carroll. This is the premise that sets it apart from most giant bug movies featuring  mutations caused by either nuclear weapons or a demented scientist. In this case its a result of noble intentions gone wrong with a sound display of scientific methodology and  multi layered sub plots such as a budding love story and a rare medical condition known as acromegaly artistically shot in black and white featuring an arid desert with whistling tumbleweeds. It is here Professor Deemer invents a special nutrient on which animals can exclusively thrive causing them to enlarge many times their normal size to serve as a source of food.

Harvested in the professors’ home laboratory are several over-sized rodents and a tarantula that escapes somewhere  in the California, Nevada area, hungry and lurking for prey, growing and yet undetected despite  leaving pools of arachnid venom and skeletal remains whenever it fed.  Why spiders and rodents were used to experiment on instead of cattle or sheep is left unexplained, but  perhaps it  suggests that Deemer thought there may be a time when a high protein diet would be defined by how many legs are on the plate.

Unthinkable imagery created by very sophisticated  visual effects and score, the film has a sharp   witty script written by Robert Fresco and  Martin Berkele based on a story by Ray Bradbury, yet its science fiction basis never diminishes the credibility that advancing bio technology may one day lead to the discovery of such a nutrient with unanticipated consequences.

When a very bored hotel concierge  asks Corday, a 1954 Playboy centerfold who  arrives in town as a biology student working on her Masters dissertation, The Nutritional Aspects Of Expanding Populations and Agar who plays the town doctor, “Well ain’t you going to introduce yourselves?” as they leave the hotel for a ride in his car.

“No” they respond in unison, as the hotel manager scratches his head and  mutters,   “Yep, it can be an awfully fast world.”

Love stories portrayed in literature and film are usually but not always centered around attractive people. In the highly anticipated comedy, Julie And Julia, written and directed by Nora Ephron , the subject of this love story is the marriage of the late Julia Child, the apostle of cooking who died in 2004, two days before her 92nd birthday. In her autobiography, My Life In France, published posthumously in 2006, she chronicles her time in Paris during the post war period before becoming the icon of French cooking popularized in her landmark book, Mastering The Art of French Cooking (1961) which helped make French cuisine accessible to the American public. She first appeared on television as The French Chef in 1963, long before the food network or cable TV was ever conceived. Sometimes, while trying to flip something in the pan, she missed the mark and dropped it on the counter, or floor, smiling as she mumbled, “whose to see?” then picked it up and put it back in the pan.

Child, at 6′2″, a large woman with a shrill husky voice and a somewhat matronly bovine appearance, is flawlessly channeled by Meryl Streep in an astonishing performance revealing a new side to the cooking icon who had a passion for life coupled with a surprisingly sexually charged relationship with her husband Paul Child, who declares his love at a St. Valentine’s dinner party: “Julia, you are the butter to my bread and the breath of my life,” a poetic line, beautifully delivered by Stanley Tucci in a brilliant performance as Julia’s husband, a quiet understated Renaissance man and career diplomat who is her rock of Gibraltar,  proving that uncommon people can be as romantically appealing as Romeo and Juliette.

When she is unsure what to do with the rest of her life, Paul asks “What do you really like to do?” as they sit in a French restaurant.
“Well, I do like to eat.” she responds.
“And you’re so good at it too.”, he says.
“Yes, yes,” both laughing uncontrollably, “and I’m growing right in front of you as we speak,” as she feeds on some fillet of sole.

The movie is constructed like The Hours, a 2002 film based on the Virginia Woolf novel Mrs. Dalloway that won an Oscar for Nicole Kidman as Best Actress. In a similar way, separate story lines are connected through time by a book. In this case, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, used by Julie Powell, a Queens housewife in 2002, living a drab, uninteresting life surrounded by friends who have made it, not knowing what to do with herself until she decides to cook all 534 recipes from Child’s cookbook in one year, then writing about it in a blog: The Julie And Julia Project. Unfortunately, the Julie Powell scenes, played adequately by Amy Adams, are far less interesting than the captivating love story of Julia and Paul Child. The film would have been much better served on a buffet tray had it focused solely on Streep and Tucci’s characters which with all that food on display makes one irresistibly hungry for more by the time it’s over. This adaptation also has some wonderfully colorful scenes of the streets and markets of Paris with a running time of 2 hours and 4 minutes. Never the less, it’s a good film worth seeing before having dinner, perhaps at a French Restaurant.

Meryl Streep proves once again that she is the foremost American actress of her generation and is sure to get a sixteenth Oscar nomination come January 2010.Tucci is outstanding as Paul Child and conveys much with gestures, expressions and eye contact. Julie And Julia is an unusually touching love story between two uncommon people.

For a full list of credits see the Idbm database.

Further references:
Mastering The Art Of French Cooking
My Life In France
Julia Child -
Meryl Streep
Stanley Tucci
Nora Ephron
The French Chef

Although pasta is not a french dish, and it was probably created by the Chinese, its heart lies in Italy, which like its politics is “eat drink and be merry for tomorrow is yet another day to eat pasta.”

Italy, a culture where many grown men live at home with mama until they marry, a unique state of affairs  when considered with the  common practice of sending their dirty laundry via special delivery half across the country for her to wash and press when they are traveling.

Historically, the roman orgy’s of wine and grapes served with cheese, bread and roasted pheasant were hosted by legions of legendary warriors, senators lending an ear (hopefully not in the food), cultivating a bulimic society reflected by the sculptured roman bodies perfected and on display in museums. Somewhere, pasta came into being, a variety of shapes of pure carbohydrates that when broken down by the body are chemically transformed into sugar elevates triglycerides.

Perhaps its helpful to envision the ultimate Italian matriarch as Sophia Loren, portraying a peasant woman on film, a daughter of Naples standing in a lower class apartment at street level, wearing an apron embroidered with the word “manga” overlooking the Mediterranean with bright sunlight bathing the room filled with stifling air from the heat of the stove without central air conditioning, her hair up while the dripping sweat from her brow falls into the vat as she stirs a large pot of pasta with a large wooden spoon looking out of the window, yelling “Marcello! Marcello!, venga aqui”,  possibly after watching an Italian film festival of cinema classics such as the vast array of characters created by Italian director Federico Fellini. For it was Sophia Loren who was quoted as saying, “Everything you see I owe to pasta” and  “The best way to eat Spaghetti is to suck it in like a vacuum cleaner.”

Putting all that aside, pasta varies only in color and form rather than substance like ice cubes that are molded by the shape of the tray. Water is after all water and  pasta is pasta, no matter what it’s appearance. What makes a good dish is the sauce.

Ingredients:
- Overripe tomato’s
- shallots
- Fresh garlic
- Salt
- Pepper
- Olive oil
- Fresh rosemary
- Your pasta of choice, spaghetti, linguine, etc.

Saute some sliced and diced shallots and fresh garlic in olive oil in a large pot till translucent as the aroma fills the air. Add salt and pepper and some fresh rosemary. Philosophically speaking, the amounts don’t matter since it depends on the number of people you are cooking for.

Peel the skin of each tomato then grabbing them in the palm of your hand squish them into the pot between your fingers and dump the remainder into the mix. The kids will love that, although be sure to wash your hands before touching them to set a good example. Cover the pot and let it all stew on low heat for as long as it takes to liquefy into a thick mixture.

Heat water in a separate pot to boil, add a tablespoon of olive oil, and salt to taste, then drop  the pasta of your choice into the boiling cauldron. The  olive oil will prevent the pasta from sticking. Then, cover the pot although its best to leave it slightly exposed to avoid all that frothy foam from spilling down the side of the pot into the flame. Quite a mess, and a common experience to the novice of pasta cooking. When you think its done, take one or two pieces of the linguine and throw it at the refrigerator. If it sticks to the door its ready to be served. If it bounces back, then your in an  alternate reality.

Pour the pasta and water in a strainer, then place a serving onto a plate. Using a large wooden spoon, fill each portion of linguine with lots of the red sauce and garnish with some oregano or parsley and grated parmigiana cheese. Serve with garlic French bread, some Vin Rouge and a mescaline salad with a mild vinaigrette dressing.

Optional: If meat is desired, balls of ground round can be added while the sauce is cooking over a slow flame. The meat can also be shaped in a cube for those who are feeling a bit creative and into diverse shapes.

Serves as many as you like depending on how much you make.

As they say in Northern Italy, Bon Appitit! In Southern Italy they would say something else.

The aggregation of matter as it undergoes any transformation into emergent molecules, crystals of varying design, a complex of ingredients based on converging atomic structures, releasing energy and heat, here, there and everywhere, certainly falls within the realm of Chemistry.

The presence or absence of Carbon defines the distinction between organic and inorganic catalytic reactions occurring among various elements. All part of the play of the “Cosmic Mother.”

Composition, also the basis for perspective, a musical sense, movement, art and of course vibration and heat, all clash to form identifiable products quantified by the scientific method. A basis that forms reality as we know it.

One of the first concepts taught in high school chemistry is the simple mixture, first illustrated by the teacher with the glass of chocolate milk, a simple co-mingling of sweet chocolate syrup and mother’s nurturing nibble milk, to illustrate this overly simplistic concept. However in New York, a different transformation occurs as we add seltzer and create the delicious beverage of choice: The Egg Cream.

Steeped in the city’s history that tells a story older than The Statue Of Liberty, The Empire State Building, Macy’s or the NYC Subway System, its origins unknown and yet the Egg Cream remains a memorable curiosity, part of New York’s fascinating blend, a cultural mix which dates to the early 1600’s.

Myth and stories surround this legend, as does the tales of The Seltzer Bottle of Blue, Green or Crystal, now just a remnant of distant decades, found only at a Flea Market or a random fair held as the cement bakes in the summer months in neighborhoods of a modern day Alexandria, a major crossroad of diverse cultures.

Rumored to have its origins in the Nineteenth Century in Brooklyn, before it merged with greater New York, although the Lower East Side contends it was discovered in Manhattan. One of the debates involve Louis Auster, although Stanley, his grandson was quoted as saying, “the origins of the name are lost in time.” One theory he proposed is that the term “Egg” is a corruption of the Yiddish “echt“, which means genuine or real, hence the notion that an Egg Cream included yolk and whites. In actuality it’s more like an ice cream soda without the ice cream.

Another version claims its origin in Paris, France, under the name “Chocolat et Crème”, with an accent grave over the first e. Hence, phonetically, it sounds like Chocolate Egg Cream, although evidence presented in a work from 1859, Domestic And Rural Affairs: The Family, Farm And Gardens, And The Domestic Animals, does include a recipe that consists of barely more than these ingredients with a bit of Cinnamon for medicinal purposes.

The landscape of ingredients is not the only factor that validates its flavor, as most who understand that the taste of any good egg cream is reflected by the way the elements are combined to produce a head. The consensus is that U-BET, a unique and tasteful chocolate syrup, is the only way to begin, preferably using a Coca Cola glass commonly found in any candy store. An inch of the syrup and of cow’s milk kept in separate layers until the seltzer is squirted while tilting the glass as the flow of carbonated water hits the milk, mixing the contents using a spoon to grow the head. Some in The Bronx claim the seltzer must hit the spoon to yield the best head, while others swear that a fork is even better to get a head, which appears as it does on a frosted mug filled with beer creating a white mustache on the upper lip as the egg cream is drunk.

Perhaps the French have a better way to give “Chocolat et Crème” the head it deserves, since they claim it first originated in Paris, a frothy thought.

According to legend of Eastern Europe, when The Tartars - a nomadic people of Eurasian origin - traveled to Tartarus, they lacked time to cook, always in such a rush on horseback. With the absence of pots, pans and utensils, tenderizing meat could only be accomplished by placing the beef underneath the horse’s saddle, squishing it as they rode their merry way from place to place. In fact this is believed to be how Steak Tartar got its name.

The earliest American version of the dish was introduced by the renowned restaurateur Guido August Luchow who first opened his fabled German restaurant, Luchow’s near Broadway at 110 E 14th Street, on Manhattan’s fabled East Side in 1882, filled with unusual delights to capture the imagination, a veritable collage of colorful foods before the advent of refrigeration, or antibiotics.

A simple recipe, it first appeared in Luchow’s Cookbook in 1952 and was rumored to have been put on the menu to entice some of his stout patrons to lose weight. Today, it’s considered a gourmet dish especially in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, France, and of course when in a Hungary state somewhere in Eastern Europe.

Ingredients:
Raw Meat (Cow, Buffalo or Horse meat)
Toasted Bread (buttered)
Raw Eggs
Fillet of Raw Anchovies
Pickled capers

First, remove as much of the fat as you can from the meat before grinding (not after). Then arrange what looks to me like a raw hamburger artfully on the buttered toast, serve a raw egg yolk on top of each slice and garnish with anchovies and capers. Voila, Steak Tartar, a delightfully uncooked serving for two, perhaps with lurking Salmonella.

I’m still trying to figure out how the Tartars made toast without a toaster?

Miri was born at the foot of the Himalayas, foretold to become shaman of the Adi people, her advice sought often when illness gripped the land. Her hut was east of the Upper Siang valley, found by the natives only when the need was great. That seemed odd since it was hard to miss, of two levels, made of dried mud and bark. The roof would open when a rope was pulled so Miri could read the stars at night. No one knew her age but it was believed everyone was younger than she.

One day after she picked the leaves of the Xingzan tree which she would grind up and drop in an open kettle of boiling water, reading them, a vision perceived, when suddenly she heard a knock on the door, disrupting her concentration. It was Yetta, her sister, who she hadn’t seen for many years.
“Where have you been for so long,  Yetta, my sister” asked Miri.
“If you had truly  been able to seer, you would know”, said Yetta sharply, then added after some thought, “far and wide, many places and things I have seen from other lands.”
“Well, reading liver and entrails has always been my specialty” responded Miri.
“Then I will bring some liver tomorrow. Perhaps you can tell me the cause of the pain in my back that has plagued me for so long”, she said.

When Yetta  came with a covered pot the next day at sundown, they sat at the creaky wooden table.
“So let’s talk liver” Miri glared suspiciously at the pot.
“Well,” retorted Yetta, “the pain comes mostly at night, radiating down my spine. Then it disappears.”
“Let me examine what you have brought” her elder sister responded, removing the top.
As she breathed the odor, her white bristled nasal hairs resonated, eyes opened wide as she gasped:
“You’re not supposed to put green peppers in chopped liver. It causes gas,” shared Miri with a gleam in her eye.

Shaman Miri’s Recipe for Chopped Chicken Liver
Ingredients:
1 pound of chicken (cow or yak) liver
1 peeled onion
Chicken fat, or substitute
2 hard boiled eggs, cooled in ice water for 10 minutes before peeling
Red wine
Kosher salt and ground black pepper

Take a 10 inch heated skillet and saute a sliced and diced onion in chicken fat (or substitute) until light brown, mix two tablespoons of red wine for flavoring, then add a   pound of chicken livers. Cook for about five minutes on high flame, tossing occasionally until firm. Mix the liver in a wooden bowl with two hard boiled eggs, add the fried onions. Use a sharp chopping blade, add wine as needed till it’s of pasty consistency. Kosher salt and ground black pepper to taste. Best served chilled.

One of the blogs recently added to my favorites’ list (blogroll) is the culinary delight Hugging The Coast, which provides user friendly recipes, well organized, colorful and interesting, with a keen sense of humor. “When properly made, the sight and smell of a cheesy, bubbly lasagna coming out of the oven has been known to make the knees of strong men go a little wobbly, and the diabolically addictive layering of flavors has been responsible for more than a few loosened belts.” A vivid description of an Italian delight that perhaps would even draw the attention of Sophia Loren who was quoted as saying: “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.”

Wonderful imagery for one of the few foreign actresses adopted by Hollywood as one of there own, and a metaphor for food and its effects on our lives and culture. This is a blog that is a celebration of coastal life, food and travel. Its founder Doug DuCap , a former New York City cab driver, became a legendary southern cook and was named the grand prize winner of the taste of the south recipe competition. DuCap’s inspiration was his friend the late James L. Gulledge , a noted ornithologist who did pioneering work in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Perhaps one of the many heirs of the late Julia Child who brought French cooking to the attention of so many in the United States and whose fascinating life is currently in post production starring Meryl Streep as the Grand Dame due for release in April 2009.

As we all know, Lasagna can be a complicated dish to make, time consuming and expensive. A layer of this, a layer of that. Another layer on top of it all and doused with tomato sauce and cheese. A complicated affair for the novice and for those with limited time. Mr. DuCap has the logical solution to resolve all the confusion. His version uses Ravioli, “which combines the pasta and ricotta in one step, and uses a gussied-up jar sauce to save time. I kept it pretty basic, but there’s a lot of room for personalization, depending on what you like or what you have at hand. You can use ground turkey or chicken in place of the ground beef, and even toss in some julienned pepperoni.”

The only question I have is: Could I use Manicotti instead of Ravioli?

Five “Bon Appetites” to a wonderfully creative blog, and a good read with an artful view of cooking layered with practicality and humor and a sense for making gourmet cooking available to everyone.