Mediterranean eel in a Cress Sauce with Potato Puree and Tomatoes

Eels became popular in Spain at the turn of the century when the Basques, always at the forefront of Spanish cooking, made angulas part of their cuisine and elevated them to culinary stardom.

The Mediterranean Moray is an eel of the large Moray family. It is also called the Roman Eel because it was a fine delicacy for the ancient Romans. These large eels, reaching up to 1.5 metres (5 feet) in length and up to 15 kilograms in weight, are on the higher part of the food chain, able to hunt and eat very large sea creatures. Read more: http://www.itsnature.org/sea/fish/mediterranean-moray/#ixzz155kUl7LF

Recently some Spanish restaurants seeking creative uses for traditional ingredients have subjected angulas to a host of indignities. Most chefs agree, however, that the classic preparation “a la Bilbaina” is still the best; once other ingredients are added, the taste of angulas can easily be overpowered and the angulas run the risk of becoming little more than a high-priced garnish, angulas salad, for example, made with olive oil, shallots and a touch of Truffle-scented vinegar, is extraordinarily good and so is angulas on toast coated with a light bechamel sauce and run under the broiler, it can also be served a salad of angulas with pickled hot green pepper encircled by warm homemade pasta. Because the season for angulas is short and demand overwhelming, angulas sell at somewhat scandalous prices. Fresh angulas are available in restaurants from late October through February and can be found frozen, at similar prices, all year long in many restaurants.

The German recipe "hamburger aalsuppe" is, simply, hamburger eel soup. Hamburgers are also passionate about their eel pies but nowhere else in Germany is eel fever more intense than in Lindau on the Bodensee. The quaint village tucked into the Alps claims to prepare eel 67 different ways.