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Glossary

Eels

Fresh and saltwater fish not unlike a snake in appearance. The main species in Australia are the short and long finned variety. Eels breed in salt water then migrate to inland rivers and dams many thousands of miles from their spawning grounds. Most eels farmed in Australia are sold for export to China, Japan and Korea. Eels are now being farmed for export and smoked for a growing local market. Freshwater eels in Australia can be classifed as "short fin" or anguilla australis and the "long-finned" - anguilla reinhardtii. The long-finned eel has a slightly longer fin and black spots on its silver-grey body. Eels have a complex reproductive life-cycle. Eels are known as catadromous - that is, they live in freshwater but migrate to the ocean to breed. While eels grow to maturity in freshwater dams, rivers and creeks, they are hatched in spawning grounds thousands of kilometers off shore. It's thought that Australian eels spawn in the Coral Sea. Larvae drift on currents back to the continental shelf. They metamorphose into glass eels and are carried by tides into the estuaries of coastal rivers where they undergo further development to become brown elvers (juvenile eels). Elvers migrate up river, grow and mature into silver eels, and at somewhere between 10 to 35 years of age head back to the Coral Sea to spawn. "What they like to do is live high on the ranges in fresh clear water where there's plenty of food," says eel farmer Paul Kirk. "After fifteen years, twenty years, they get sexually mature and feed up, then when the big rains come, they decide to make their journey, travelling back down the river system to the sea, changing colour as they go. On reaching the sea they head to spawning grounds somewhere, they think, near Vanuatu." The fertilized eggs hatch into what are called leptocephalia which drift towards land, eventually turning into glass eels, transparent worm-like creatures which will become elvers, or juvenile eels. The elvers are the ones who will work their way back upstream, back to where their parents came from, it's said, although who could ever prove that! At Guyra on the New England tableland, Paul Kirk has set up one of a handful of Australian eel farms. It's thought that Guyra, lying on the top of the Great Dividing Range, is the stopping point for the eel migration upstream. "This is as high as they can come," says Paul. "They don't exist on the western fall of the Divide but only on the eastern side, as high as they can." Eel is a popular delicacy in Japan, China and Korea and used to be eaten a great deal in Australia too - either smoked or deep-fried. It's a rich, delicious fish and well worth seeking out.

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Gorgonzola

Gorgonzola is a creamy blue cheese used in the classic Italian dish: gnocchi gorgonzola.