“The younger guy placed the eel meat atop our rice and then pulled out the world's coolest cooking utensil. My jaw literally dropped. I looked over at Iris. Her mouth was hanging open, too. The world's coolest cooking utensil is a sauce ladle. The cup at the end of the handle is a cube with three thin spouts emerging from the side, better to dispense sauce thinly over a wide area. It's a tiny watering can for sauce- in this case, sweet eel sauce, made from eel bone broth enriched with soy sauce, sugar, and mirin.” CookingSauceEelUtensil Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo Source: Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
“Iris's favorite item at Tenta is anago, sea eel. Unlike its freshwater cousin unagi, anago is neither endangered nor expensive. A whole anago at Tenta is about $7.50. I ordered one, and the chef pulled a live eel out of a bucket. It wriggled like, well, an eel. Iris screamed as water droplets flew toward us. The chef managed to wrestle the unruly thing into the sink and knocked it unconscious before driving a spike into its head and filleting it. He unzipped two fillets in seconds. A Provençal saying holds that a fish lives in water and dies in oil; in the world of tempura, a fish can go from watery cradle to oily grave in ten seconds. Iris loved fried eel meat, dipped in salt, but this is not her favorite part of the anago. After filleting the eel, the chef takes its backbone- hone in Japanese- ties it in a simple overhand knot, and tosses it into the frying oil. "Hone," he says, presenting it to Iris, who considers it the ultimate in crispy snack food- and this is a kid who considers taco-flavored Doritos a work of genius (OK, so do I).” BackboneEelTempuraAnago Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo Source: Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo