Lamproie à La Bordelaise

Name: Lamproie à La Bordelaise
Yield: Serves 4-6 (depends on size of fish)
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 3 carrots, diced; 1 live lamprey (weight about 400-500 g/1 lb); 1 onion, diced; 1 bouquet garni (small bunch dried parsley, thyme, bayleaf); 1 clove garlic, crushed; 2 slices Bayonne ham, cut into cubes; 4 leeks, white part only; 1 bottle red Bordeaux; 150 g/5½ oz butter; 30 g/1 oz flour; 55 g/2 oz bitter chocolate; salt, pepper

Preparation info

Serves
4-6
(depends on size of fish)

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Chocolate

By Sara Jayne Stanes

Published 1999

About

Here’s an interesting dish from Christian Constant (See Paris). Don’t squirm at the idea of live eel. You can perfectly well use a dead one. You can also use eel and omit the blood. If you do then halve the amount of chocolate used. I have tried it and it works.

Ingredients

1 live lamprey (weight about 400-500 g/1 lb)
1

Europe
Americas
France
Mexico
Savoury
Main course
Paris
Mediterranean
Central America

Method

Take a live lamprey, bleed it and reserve the blood for the sauce. Place the fish in hot water and carefully scrape off the skin. Cut off the head and the tail, removing the spinal cord, which runs between the two. Cut into pieces.

In a high-sided frying pan or shallow casserole dish, brown the diced vegetables in a little butter and add the pieces of fish, the garlic and the herbs. Cov