Posted on 04/28/2012 3:38:46 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Lampreys from Great Lakes destined for queen's pie
DETROIT — A few unwanted, invasive sea lampreys from the Great Lakes have been shipped to England for use in a traditional pie for Queen Elizabeth II.
The Detroit Free Press reports (http://on.freep.com/IdmZkP) the City of Gloucester, which has given the pie as a gift to the monarch since the Middle Ages, requested the eel-like creatures from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission because they're a protected species in England. The pie is for June's Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of the queen's ascent to the throne.
Commission spokesman Marc Gaden shipped 2 pounds of frozen lamprey from Lake Huron. He says Great Lakes officials "would prefer to send them truckloads of lamprey."
Lampreys got into the Great Lakes through Atlantic shipping canals in the 1920s and have threatened native fish since.
'Lamprays Bake'
This is a translation into modern measurements from an old English recipe from the 15th Century called “Lamprays Bake” from “A New Boke of Olde Cokery,” a collection of medieval recipes by Rudd Rayfield.
Pastry dough for nine-inch pie crust
1 pound eel, catfish, or other fish filets
1/2 C brown bread crumbs (1/3 C if blood is used)
1/4 C wine vinegar (2T if blood is used)
1/4 C fresh eel or fish blood (optional)
1/4 C dry wine
1/4 tsp. each cinnamon and black pepper
Salt to taste
SYRUP AND SOPS:
1 C sweet wine
1/4 tsp. powdered ginger
3 slices firm white bread
1 T brown sugar, or to taste
1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Line a pie pan with the crust, and put it in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes to harden it. Remove it, and reduce oven temperature to 350°.
3. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, vinegar, dry wine, cinnamon, salt and pepper (and blood if it is used).
4. Place the eels or fish in the pie crust, and pour the sauce over them. Cover the pie with heavy aluminum foil, with a few holes poked in it. Put the pie in the oven, and bake it for half an hour to forty-five minutes, or until the eels or fish are done. Remove it, and allow it to cool.
5. Remove the foil from the pie, and carefully remove the eels or fish from the pie, and arrange them on a serving dish.
6. In a saucepan, over low heat, combine half of the sweet wine with the ginger and brown sugar. Carefully pour the sauce remaining in the bottom of the pie crust into the saucepan. Bring the ingredients to a boil, and simmer, stirring frequently, for about five minutes.
7. Line the bottom of the pie crust with the slices of white bread, and pour over them the remaining sweet wine. Then pour the hot syrup over the bread and wine, and serve the sops in the crust, and the eels or fish separately.
Serves six to eight.
NOTES ON THE RECIPE: This pie is simply the container in which the eel (or fish) is baked; it is removed from the crust for serving, but then a sop of bread and spiced wine is put in the empty crust, and that is served separately. The sauce for this dish is similar to the blood sauce for fish, Sauce Pour Lamprey, but I have adapted it so that the blood is optional. Feel free to add it if you have access to fish blood. I also cover the pie with aluminum foil to bake, rather than a second crust, since the cover needs to be removed to get the eels (or fish) out anyway. I add sugar to the wine sops, which helps a great deal.
“they’re a protected species in England.”
Are they insane? These damn things are a curse!
ick.
The brits don't know how to cook.
/johnny
they’re a protected species in England.”
Are they insane? These damn things are a curse!
________________________________________
I see a pattern here...
Moslems are also protected in England...
I always add a bit more cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg to my Lampray Bake.
Strange British meatpie recipe ...
ping
Of course as a 10 year old kid at the time, I never realized what a problem they were for the then limited fishing industry.........
I also remember seeing almost every trout caught from the river or Lake Charlevoix having a lamphrey attached to it or the wound marks on it.......It was an infestation.
I actually like mine with a scoop of vanilla ice cream ... pie a la mode!
heh
Strange British meatpie recipe ...Evidently, lampreys >>>> blackbirds.
4 and 20 lampreys baked in a pie....
A slimy parasite for royal. Perfect.
Egads, does she not know what happened to Henry I?
Yuck. Like I REALLY wanted to see a pic of Moochelle’s vajayjay.
snapper bump
Her Majesty can have them. Probably better than dog though.
Can't be all that useless if they make a pie out of them, but I can empathize with those that are affected by the invaders.
Perhaps MI could ship a couple of thousands of tons of zebra mussels as an accompaniment?
sometimes we alternate with a slice of sharp cheddar
LOL the way you describe it that does sound good, now you went and made me hungry :)
Sounds delicious! But here on Lake Erie, they’re considered to be a pestilence! I certainly would try them at least once. My Shanghai-born lady friend cooks regular black eels every once in a while, and they’re wonderful. Except she makes me clean them, and they’re a pain to clean! Made myself twice-fried belt fish for dinner tonight. Kind of an eel like fish. I bought the smallest one they had at the Asian market. 3 feet long!
Let’s capture all we can and Obama can offer them as his next gift to the Monarch.
Lots more where that came from Liz. Take all you want!
On the west coast, even though these eels come in from the ocean, they migrate up the rivers to hatch the young and are considered fresh water eels. There are ocean eels there also and they too are good to eat. There is a gray eel here in Maui that is good to eat and I have tried it several times. The Moray is not considered good eating as far as I know. The Japanese have a fresh water eel they put on their sushi and it is really good. Our Indians on the Klamath hook them with an “eel hook”. Its a handle of wood about as long as a golf club with a barb less hook at the end. They stand at the waters edge and the eels come up close to shore as to stay out of the strong current and also the seals and sea lions and the man hooks the eel and swings it around and around over his head and then throws it up on shore and the ladies put them into the gunny sacks. The reason for swinging them around is that with the barb less hooks, the centrifugal force keeps the eel on the hook until he tosses it. It is actually a lot of fun if the eels are running good. Now days some of the women go eeling but it was forbidden in the old days before the feminazis come around. LOL.
I thought it was four and twenty blackbirds that they cooked in a pie for the king or queen.
That sounds really good!
I haven’t had fry bread in ages!
Thanks DogByte!
Ping to a fellow foodie.
We used smelt net to scoop them out of the Cheboygan River and through them in bonfire. One of God’s nastiest critters.
nice proofreading... sheesh
MDNR: “Purple loosestrife is an aggresive inavsive species! How do we control it?”
Sierra Club executive: “You can’t poison it so you must use a natural predator. That natural predator is the Japanese Beetle.”
Japaneses beetle: “Wow, the leaves of flowering plants here in Michigan taste Soooooooo much better that that purple thing we are used to.”
Tah, dah!
Its all a very traditional middle age recipe, but I think I’d give it a miss, thanks.
ITs because theres not many of them left - they all got eaten.
Or shakespeare for that matter. Didnt he die of “a surfeit of lampreys”?
No way I’d eat one of those pies! ICK!
No, that is how Henry I bought the farm ( 1 Dec 1135), hence my post. Henry left no male heir and his death brought forward the whole Matilda / Stephen thing. Liz II has Chuckie as the presumptive heir. I hope she only nibbles on the pie.
Similar to British muslims.
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