When we celebrated Annette's Venetian Birthday Feast, there was one dish that I really wanted to make, but could not get a key ingredient. Bisati sull'Ara, or Eels on the Altar, was a traditional dinner for the glassblowers of Murano. They would take eels from the harbor, chop them and bake them in the glass furnaces on and under bay leaves, seasoned only with salt. But I could not get the eels.

Well, Christmas brings many wonderful things, and it brings eels, too, to fish markets in areas with large Italian populations (and maybe Portuguese too?). So our Saturday meanderings brought us to New Bedford, one of the two great fishing ports of Massachusetts (the other being Gloucester).

After some careful exploration of the local antiques coops, I had a hunch to try Kyler's Catch Seafood, not far from Exit 15, in hopes of finding plump eels to cook "on the altar". 

They had the eels, and smoked ones, too, but I passed on those. As soon as I had a bag with two plump eels, I called Annette. We hastily arranged a dinner featuring the eels.

The recipe is about the easiest recipe since the hard-boiled egg. I had the bay leaves and salt, and there's nothing else but a sprinkle of water. They came out delicious, seasoned with bay leaf where they were touching, and with the sweet rich flavor of the eels where the meat was away from the toasting bay leaves. We served it with the last of Shelley's Cioppino and a Gruet bubbly (because it was a good dry white, and because it was New Year's Eve!).

Not only did it successfully close off that Venetian adventure and close out the eelquest, it ended 2011 on a delicious, adventuresome Foodie Pilgrim note!