- You know, as long as I've lived in Oregon,
you kind of assume that, you know,
the further that you can cast out here,
the better chance you have of catching a fish.
But in reality, you're going to just standing
right on top of them.
A lot of the times, especially on the bigger jetties,
I think it's extremely surprising for a lot of people
who see people doing this.
I haven't seen it before because you're literally just
standing on top of the fish.
(water bubbling)
So this is your a Monkeyface prickleback
or the Monkeyface eel, not a true eel.
It's actually in the prickleback family,
which means that it can breathe outside of water.
And the reason for that is because when this tide goes out,
they kind of stay in their little habitat in the rocks.
They don't move very far,
even for their whole lifespan and they can survive,
not submerged.
I think a lot of hesitation with fish cookery is just not
knowing the exact technique that's necessary for each one.
With this eel,
it's not any more or less intimidating than any other fish.
It's a little bit uglier as far as the flavor goes,
it's just as delicious as anything else that you can get out
of the ocean.
(upbeat music)
So we're going to be using a poke pole today.
This is a bamboo poke pole,
and then it has a wire coat hanger wrapped around the end.
And it's fashioned with duct tape.
It's been around for a long time. It's really effective.
And I would say that it could be attributed to native
American fishermen.
So when you're poke-poling, the rig
and the setup is really simple.
You just have to find the proper location.
But the last two days,
this is the fourth jetty
that we've been on looking for them.
You know, we were down in Southern Oregon,
but we decided to explore some jetties down there and had no
luck even went up to Newport, which is more of a, you know,
populous area for sea life. Still,
no monkeyface eels are not,
not in enough population to really be able to find them
easily.
And then now we're up here in Netarts Bay,
we're on the jetty that comes off the landing at the
Schooner Restaurant.
(fish falls)
(giggles)
So, the hook got out.
So that's just sort of an example of what not to do.
Just saw one take off from under this one.
And they went like this right down there,
even so this high up, see
it's just like an inch of water.
(fish thumping)
I just waited for him to bite the bait a little bit more.
I kind of let him have it and he'll start to hit it a little
bit more and then you can kind of tie him up.
So we got another nice size one here,
right in the exact same hole as the one that I just lost.
So remember just because you catch a monkeyface eel in
one spot, doesn't mean there's not two or three or sometimes
several more than that in the same hole.
(fish knocks)
One thing I will say about these is I actually prefer to eat
the smaller ones. The large eel
for some reason,
can have more of like an iodine type flavor to it.
The small ones,
I feel like the flavor and the texture of the meat is a lot
better.
They often have a higher fat content,
just typically a smaller,
younger eel is going to be an omnivorous as opposed to a
large adult eel,
which is going to be basically only eating seaweed.
They go to like almost a strictly vegan diet
at a certain age.
We have caught five of them in an hour.
So a lot more luck.
Now we're going to head to the beach to process the eel
and we're going to grill it up.
(upbeat music)
So here we are back on the beach and Netarts Bay,
we have our monkeyface eel that we've caught and we're
going to show you how to filet it, prepare it.
And then ultimately we're going to grill and glaze it.
So here we have our eel.
We're going to pat it dry here with the towel.
They do have a little bit of slime, nothing at all,
like any other eels though,
they're pretty clean for the most part.
We're just going to get it nice and dry.
Make an incision straight to the bone,
come this other way to make sure the cut is complete.
And you can see the spine here in the center.
We're just going to follow right along that as we get the
knife in just nice and easy, right along the bones here,
(background music)
we have our nice long filet.
So you can see our bones are nice and clean.
We're going to flip it over and do the same thing.
(upbeat music)
So we have our eel.
There are no pin bones in this fish either.
So this is totally ready to go.
The only thing I'm going to do here is just trim a really
small amount here, just where the meat is too thin.
A lot of times it just curls up and gets in the way.
And we can just save that with our scrap meat that you can
put in your smoker or dehydrator or whatever you'd like.
So now that we have our Eel fileted and cleaned,
we're going to show you how to prepare them
over a grill today.
We're going to finish cleaning up this filet,
portion it, put it on skewers.
We're going to cook it
over some very hot charcoal in the yakitori
and finish it with a simple glaze that we've prepared.
We're going to flip it over.
We're just going to scrape any remaining unwanted moisture
right off of the outside.
This will help with the grilling process.
They do have scales,
but they're really tiny and they don't need to be removed
for this dish.
So next, we're going to take our skewers.
These have just been soaked overnight
and a little bit of seawater.
So you go into the meat right under the skin and you're
going to weave it.
So you're coming in and then up right to the skin.
And then back down,
you're basically securing the skin in place so that when we
cook it over our fire, it doesn't move or curl up at all,
which is something that can really happen with this.
And the whole key to being able to pull this dish off is to
be able to cook the skin really hot so that it breaks down.
All right, so now we have our skewered eel.
Just going to grab these up like this.
It doesn't really matter, you can bunch them up at the end,
whatever, just as long as it stays a little bit flat,
I'm gonna flip it over onto our cooking tray.
I'm gonna take a little bit of sea salt here,
sprinkle it over the flesh, but only on the flesh side,
you're not going to do any salt on the skin and you
can kind of pat it on there just to make sure that it
sticks.
We have our eel that's skewered, and ready to grill.
Just like with all the preparations that we do,
we're just trying to prepare this as simply as possible.
So I highlight the natural flavors of it.
So we aren't trying to overcomplicate it.
No excessive ingredients,
sea salt from the same bay that it's caught in
So we just have our charcoal that we've ignited in a little
chimney just to get it nice and hot before it goes into the
yakitori. We want it to be about a medium heat, medium high,
it's almost a requirement I would say to use a thin wire,
great for grilling the Eel or any fish skin,
because you're going to give your skin more surface area
over the flame, as opposed to having large bars.
And what this is going to allow to do is the fat to render
out of the skin,
which is going to cause it to become crispy.
All right,
so we have our eel filets that have been skewered.
They've been cured really lightly with salt.
It's been sitting for about 30 minutes
with the sea salt on it.
We have our charcoal,
that's gotten raging hot over here in the operatory.
We're going to take our eel filet.
We're going to take a little bit of grapeseed oil.
This is a cooking oil,
and we're just going to put a couple drops on here and then
take our finger and just rub it on the filet here,
just to make sure it has a really nice even coating.
So you don't want any excess,
if there's a single drop that hits the charcoal,
it'll cause a flare up
which causes your fish to take on an off flavor.
We're going to go right over this hot part,
trying to hear a nice light sizzle.
And this is going to go for probably about five minutes,
total, and almost entirely on the skin side.
You kind of just want to hang onto these for a second
and just hold the eel in place.
Just take a look to make sure it's not getting too dark.
You don't want too much color.
So the key to cooking the monkeyface eel is to get the
skin to break down really quickly as it can tracks
over the charcoal.
That way it doesn't curl up.
And we keep a nice flat surface
and we're using that nice dense fatty skin
to sort of protect the delicate flesh as it cooks
once a skin starts to render.
If you were just to put this filet directly on the grill,
that would just curl up into a weird looking grade tube.
So what we're looking for there, nice color,
few black spots and bubbles,
and you can feel it with your hand.
It's just extremely crispy.
So it's okay to get it a little bit dark.
It's kind of what you're looking for. You know,
we've cooked it almost 90% of the way just on the skin.
And then we're going to let it hang out here for a second.
And now that we have it flipped,
we're going to apply our glaze,
but we've just taken a stock
that we've made from our smoked and dried Eel bones
from previous fish and reduce that down
to a glaze.
And it's been seasoned with a little bit of tamari from some
of our house-made barlotti bean miso,
and also a little bit of fish sauce that we've made in house
with butter clam scraps, another layer right on there.
Don't be afraid to get it down on all sides.
Yeah, you can definitely smell the glaze.
It's cooking. It's hitting the grill.
It's caramelizing more around the edges, which is perfect.
So this is our finished product here.
The monkeyface eel has been fileted cured then skewered.
We grilled it really intensely over charcoal to break that
skin down, let it finish cooking on the flesh side.
As we glazed the skin with our eel sauce.
And then we're going to put one last layer of this,
right over the top, all around the sides.
And that is your barbecued monkeyface eel
caught on a poke pole here in Netarts Bay.
(munching)
(background music)
So, skin is super crispy, totally rendered out.
The glaze is sweet and tangy
and has a nice mouth coating quality.
And the meat is extremely tender and it has like,
almost like a mouth coating fattiness to it.
This is one of the main reasons why we were saying
that the best monkeyface eel to harvest are
the juvenile ones that are between 12 and 14 inches.
There were like, you know, just under a pound.
The flavor is so sweet, so clean still has all
that fat in there and delicious crispy skin.
That's good.
(background music)