Last week on Top Chef, contestants broke out their filleting knives for a Quickfire challenge judged by guest Eric Ripert, chef and part owner of the world famous French seafood restaurant Le Bernardin in New York City.

First up to fillet were sardines—-hard to debone because of their small size but pretty standard fare. Next came arctic char—-much bigger, still fairly familiar. Then came something rarely seen on dinner menus, much less in home kitchens—-freshwater eel.

We at Pop Omnivore wondered why we knew so little about eel as food. So we decided to investigate.

According to Larousse Gastronomique, eels are “snakelike fish with a smooth slippery skin." The culinary encyclopedia then goes on to say, "Eels are sold alive. They are killed and skinned at the last moment as the flesh deteriorates rapidly, and the raw blood is poisonous if it enters a cut – for example, on one’s finger.” Cooking the eel detoxifies its blood.

On the show, Chef Ripert told contestants that the eels had just been killed and were definitely dead, even though they continued to move. Though the movement is strictly nerve-related and not a sign of life, it can be, well, unnerving. Says Ripert, “They will move for hours. Seriously, for hours.” Indeed, many of the chefs looked squeamish as they dealt with the rather gruesome process of peeling and filleting their challenge.

In America, we don’t see much eel for sale. “I think a lot of people are scared by the fact that they look like a snake, and I don’t know too many chefs that enjoy receiving eels at the restaurant,” says Ripert. We’ll spare you the details about the killing of the slithery fish, but Ripert puts it rather succinctly: “It’s a very unpleasant process.”

In parts of Europe and Asia, however, eel is a more common sight on the plate. The French like to braise it with red wine and garlic. In Japan, where it’s believed that eel can boost stamina in hot weather, the fish is often glazed with miso and grilled. Scandinavians and Germans smoke their eel and serve it with rye bread, while the British put it in a savory pie.

So what does it taste like? “It’s not a very refined fish, and many times, they taste like mud,” says Ripert. Um, they taste like mud? “Yes, they live on the bottom, in the mud, and many times they acquire that taste. It’s a very earthy fish.” He explains that this is why strong ingredients, like wine, are often used when cooking eel—which is on the fatty side--to help mask that muddy flavor. On the show, the contestants did not have to cook their eel once it was filleted, but Ripert says he would have had them make a stew if the challenge had gone further.

Eels aren’t widely available in the U.S. but they can be found at some Asian markets. If you’re not interested in dealing with them live, just ask the fishmonger to do the “processing” for you. Remember, though, that they do continue to move for quite a while after they’ve been offed. If you’d prefer to prepare your eels sans the residual muscle movement, Ripert suggests keeping them in the refrigerator a day or two before cooking.

Finally, we asked the master seafood chef-- who will soon be starring in a PBS cooking show of his own--for a recipe, should any Pop Omnivore readers feel inclined to cook up some eel. We want to know who’s up for the challenge! P.S. If you can’t find eel, monkfish will be a fine substitute.

-Catherine Barker

Matelote of Eel
Serves 4
2 pounds eel, peeled and filleted, reserving the bones
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 small shallots, minced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cups red wine, preferably Merlot
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup button mushrooms, washed and quartered
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs thyme
2 tablespoons butter
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Cut the eel bones into 3 inch pieces.  Heat a large sauce pan with the canola oil over medium high heat; when the pan is hot, add the eel bones and sear lightly.  About 3 minutes.

Add the shallots and garlic and cook until soft. Add the red wine and reduce by half.  Add the chicken stock; bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
After the sauce has cooked for 10 minutes, remove and discard the eel bones.  Season the eel on both sides with salt and pepper and add the eel, mushrooms, bay leaf and thyme to the sauce. Cover and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.

Finish the braised eel by stirring in the butter and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Perhaps you hit the eggnog a little too hard at the party last night. Or maybe champagne did you in, and now you're cursing that "friend" who kept filling your glass.

No matter how it happened, though, you now have a hangover and will do just about anything to get rid of it. Doctors advise drinking copious amounts of water and taking vitamins and aspirin. Some people swear by grease--burgers and fried eggs are popular antidotes in America. Others, like the Japanese, follow a more virtuous regimen of fruits and green tea. In this month's magazine and on our website, we take a look at some international suggestions for how to cope with the effects of one too many.

Hangovers happen to anyone who drinks too much alcohol, but some people fare worse than others. It all depends on what you drank--some say clear booze is less toxic--how much you drank, what size you are, and possibly even your temperament (if you've had a particularly difficult time of it lately, or you're prone to anger or anxiety, you may suffer more severely than others).

One of the biggest contributors to the wretched hangover is dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it makes you go to the bathroom frequently, and every time you go, you lose a little more water. While you're having fun quaffing drinks, your body is quickly becoming dehydrated and will punish you for it the next day. Pounding headaches, nausea, and dizziness are just a few of the delightful ways a hangover can manifest itself, so consider this a warning and watch how much you swill at those holiday soirees.

Now, that said, even the most careful among us gets carried away sometimes. And it seems everyone has a secret remedy. One of my friends swears by bananas and ice cold Coke. Another says a chocolate milkshake works wonders. Who else wants to weigh in? What do I take if I'm hung over in Paris? Or Puerto Rico? Let's hear it! And oh, cheers. But clink the glasses together softly, please -- my head is killing me.

-Catherine Barker

New Orleans just declared the Sazerac its official cocktail. A city drink by law? Now that's a piece of legislation I can get behind!

But what exactly is it?

According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, the Sazerac was invented in New Orleans in the early 1800s. It began with a pharmacist named Antoine Amédée Peychaud, who had created something called Peychaud's Bitters, a blend of herbs and alcohol he liked to mix with cognac for his pals.

Sewell Taylor, another local, made the drink famous. He owned the Sazerac Coffeehouse—a common name for bars at the time. And he started serving the drink - which he made with an imported cognac called Sazerac de Forge et Fils. So the name has two possible origins. Either way, it has stood the test of time. But the recipe has since evolved a bit. In addition to bitters, the drink now includes absinthe, sugar, and rye whiskey.

All of this was good to know. But as a journalist, I can’t stop with mere knowledge. I had to imbibe.

So last week I took a seat at Acadiana, a popular DC restaurant with a New Orleans flavor. I was tempted by the big, cold beers being slung around the bar, but I kept my focus and ordered a Sazerac. "Have you had one before?" the bartender asked, raising her eyebrows and clearly doubting my level of tolerance. (I don’t know why—I stand 5’ 4” in heels.) "No," I said, "But I can handle strong drinks." She started pouring.

I took a sip. Yeeow! The whiskey went down my throat like a stream of fire. There's nothing sweet or slurpy about a Sazerac. Unlike, say, a screwdriver or a frozen margarita, the alcohol in a Sazerac doesn't hide behind fruit juice or a cloying sour mix.

But I liked it. Now all I wanted was a classic recipe.

I turned to Jesse Martin, a bartender at the famous French-Quarter restaurant Brennan's, who thinks it's "very, very cool," that the Sazerac has been crowned the Big Easy's official tipple. But is it really as popular in his town as the new legislation suggests? "Oh yeah," he says. "Especially in the mornings."

Sazerac Cocktail

Makes one two-ounce drink

Pour just enough Herbsaint (a brand of anise-flavored liquor, beloved in New Orleans) or absinthe into a standard old-fashioned glass or tumbler to coat.

Swirl the liquor around in the glass to coat. Let sit while you prepare the drink in a shaker.

Put ice in shaker to cool it down. Add four dashes of Peychaud's bitters, two drops of Angostura bitters, a couple of dashes of syrup (equal parts water and sugar combined), and 1.5 ounces of rye whiskey.

Shake vigorously for about 30 seconds, then strain into glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

Serve with pancakes, omelettes, or a big bowl of Wheaties!

-Catherine Barker

Just as she promised, Marcia Ball cooked up “emergency gumbo and shrimp remoulade”— for those days when you just don’t have time to labor over the stove—at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She did all the work in 15 minutes, then just had to wait another 15 for the flavors to meld.

Here’s what you need on hand:

1 cup flour
1 cup oil
2 big onions
1 green pepper
some garlic
4 boxes chicken broth
2 rotisserie chickens (already cooked)
2 bay leaves
green onions for garnish
parsley
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper

The flour and oil are for the roux, a thickening agent. It can take a good 30 minutes  to stir that flour and oil in a pan until it reduces to a rich brown hue. And it takes a lot of elbow grease. So you have permission to cheat. Ball reports that her brother was waiting in line at a Lafayette, Louisiana, post office and listening to the other waitees talk about food. And they all used roux from a jar. (Google “bottled roux,” and there it is!) “I guarantee that restaurants do it, too,” said Ball. “And you can’t tell the difference.”

In a large pot, she poured some of that chicken broth, and added the chopped onion and green pepper. She didn’t add tomatoes because she just doesn’t like them in her gumbo. She added the bay leaves and both rotisserie chickens, but no hot sauce because “It’s not my goal to burn people out.” You could add some small slices of okra, which also acts as a thickener.
As the minutes ticked by, Ball added a dash of cayenne pepper, some black pepper and salt. She did have a helper on hand preparing roux from scratch, which she added toward the end.

At one point she plucked out a chicken bone and noted, “People who’ve never eaten gumbo are sometimes shocked by bones in the soup.”

You can add oysters or sausage at the end, if you want. Voila: 30-minute gumbo! All you need to go with it is some long-grain rice. “To make it pretty,” sprinkle some chopped green onions and parsley on the top.

Then the lanky songstress prepared an even speedier shrimp remoulade.

She took a plate of lettuce and added some slices of avocado. “This avocado probably cost $5,” she noted. “It’s the most beautiful avocado I’ve ever seen.”

She piled some steamed shrimp atop the green bed.

She took a jar and filled it with ingredients for the dressing:

1 cup vegetable oil
1/3 to 1/2 cup vinegar
1 jar creole mustard (which is dense and brown but wasn’t around, so she used stone ground instead)
2 tablespoons paprika
some finely chopped onion and garlic
horseradish (optional)
Tabasco sauce (although “you don’t have to”)

Then she screwed the lid on the jar. “I don’t have a food processor,” Ball said. So she shook that jar with some serious hip motion and sang, “Shake it up baby, come on twist and shout.”

Hmm, the dressing looked a little thin. Maybe she should have used less oil.

To compensate, she added more mustard. The dressing looked good. Her advice: “Don’t skimp on the mustard. It’s the predominant flavor.”

Also: “Salt and pepper wouldn’t hurt it.” And just for good measure, she added a heaping teaspoon of horseradish.

The dressing was a beautiful shade of tan. She poured it on the plate of lettuce, avocado, and shrimp. And there you have it:
Shrimp remoulade!

If you want to try Ball’s girlhood dessert, take some buttered white bread and dip it in a saucer full of syrup. “Boy, I feel old,” she said, describing the sweet treat. “It’s like from another world.”

Oh, and no matter what you cook, you might want to follow the advice of a friend of Ball’s mother. If asked for a recipe, she’d always say, “First you wash your hands.”

Ball closed her session with a joke that shows how Cajuns will cook just about anything. Two Cajuns see a UFO land, and some odd-looking creature gets out. One Cajun asks, “Now what’s that?”

The other one says, “I don’t know, but make some rice.”

- Marc Silver

Two exotic-sounding ingredients have been making repeat performances on Bravo's Top Chef this season.

Ras el hanout has shown up in beet salad with goat cheese and in a foie gras mousse with peaches.

According to Larousse Gastronomique, ras el hanout is "a complex mixture of twenty or more ground spices, used mainly in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The literal meaning is "head" or "top of the shop." Since the mixture was traditionally made from a market's superior spices, the name is fitting.

A call to Casablanca Restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, revealed what exactly is in the mix. Chef Nadir Elhajji, who is Moroccan, explained that the combination includes paprika, ginger, black and white pepper, curry, coriander, nutmeg, and cumin. Depending on the country, ras el hanout might also include garlic, rosemary, lavender, or saffron. It's available in some Middle Eastern stores and online, but chef Elhajji prefers to make his own from his battery of ground spices. He's not so sure about mixing ras el hanout with beets or peaches but does like it with lamb. He’ll combine four pounds of lamb chops, a sliced onion, and two teaspoons of ras el hanout in an ovenproof pot. Coat the meat, onions, and spice liberally with olive oil and cover the pot tightly. Cook for two to six hours in a 250-degree oven. Or, if you happen to be in Marrakesh, do what the locals do and place your pot in the smoldering fire used to heat the local Turkish bath.

The other unfamiliar guest ingredient is something called yuzu. This fun-to-pronounce fruit has been blended into a butter sauce for a chicken dish, tossed with fish, and—my favorite application—used to dress a "sexy banana salad."

Whole Foods' online citrus guide was helpful: "Quite popular in Japan where it is typically used in place of lemons, the bright yellow yuzu is occasionally found in ethnic markets in North America. In Japan, its highly acidic juice is used to flavor mushrooms and its zest is added to clear soups or atop fish or cooked vegetables. Whole yuzus wrapped in cheesecloth are placed in hot bathwater to celebrate the winter solstice, a highly aromatic and sensuous experience." Fresh ones are only available in the U.S. in winter; yuzu-enthusiasts can tide themselves over until then with bottled juice. At a Japanese grocery store in Virginia, seven ounces goes for $10. That’s a lot more than lemon juice! The grocer doesn't seem surprised by the cost of yuzu. "It has more flavor."

As for ras el hanout, Chef Elhajji, a fan of the show, isn’t that impressed: "I call ras el hanout the easy spice. It gets you all the flavor at once. Like having your coffee and sugar already mixed."

Perhaps its appeal is all in its unusual name. After all, bouquet garni is just a bunch of parsley and herbs. But top chefs love it.

-Catherine Barker

The first thing I thought when I heard about the movie Ratatouille was, "Brilliant! More people need to know about this great vegetable dish from the south of France whose name comes partly from the verb, touiller, which means to stir or mix."

But that's just me, the francophile foodie...

Anyhow, there's another, perhaps more surprising reason this film is genius--the fact that the hero, Remy, is a rat. True, "rat" is in the name of the dish that he makes so well it brings the snooty French food critic to tears in a Proustian denouement. This choice is clever because a rat is one of the last things you want to see in a kitchen. But so is a roach...so why not Remy the roach? Because rats really can taste food.

Rats have taste buds and a sophisticated sense of whether or not something is safe to eat. Remember the scene where Remy saves his family from being poisoned? As omnivores, rats eat everything, and would eat poison if it weren't for their keen taste buds, which can pick up on its bitter flavor. Once they eat something that triggers this sense and makes them sick, they will remember to avoid it so they don't repeat the experience. (Good thing, too, because unlike humans, rats can't vomit.)

And while the soup Remy rescues from the clumsy hands of the garbage boy, Linguini, wouldn't have killed the customers, it would have certainly sent them away with a bad taste in their mouths. And this epicurean rat will do whatever he can to prevent that from happening.

So, the Omnie for smartest choice of critter in a leading role goes to....Pixar, for Remy the rat in Ratatouille.

—Catherine Barker

I'm from Albany, NY, where they don't have anything I'd call "local" in the way of food. Growing up, I ate things like spaghetti, steak, pot roast, and chicken hearts (a foodie from the start, I think I'm the only one who ate this last item), and no matter where I went in the USA, these things - ok, not the hearts -  were always on the menu.

But when I started researching my story on regional foods for the September issue, I was surprised at how differently (at least from a gastronomical standpoint) other folks were raised. A friend from Maine told me she remembered her disappointment when, as a little girl, she discovered that they don't sell lobster rolls at every McDonald's. And, while I was busy eating routine chocolate ice cream cones, I had no idea other kids were getting exciting-sounding things like buckeye candies in Ohio and gooey cake in St. Louis. 

So now I know that there's more than one way to eat ravioli and there's more than one word for ground-up pig parts. What was on the table where you grew up? Remember how you felt when you realized that you couldn't find it once you left home? Is it still hard to find, or is it everywhere now? What do you think is the proper way to make it, and eat it?

— Catherine Barker