![]() On River Monsters, Wade always lets his conquests go, often after cradling them in his arms briefly, like a bouquet. “I didn’t particularly enjoy that either.” “What comes out on the other end is this sort of soup,” Wade says. Then the water was poured through a sieve, to remove bones. They were boiled “literally until they disintegrated,” he says. (He concedes its usefulness as a ready-to-eat jungle ration, though.) Perhaps the most revolting fish dish? Six-inch roach fish caught in Romania, at the Danube River delta. He’s had one too many slimy catfish (a good way to remove the goo on their skin is with lime or lemon juice, he’s found) and he is not a fan of salted arapaima, transported in the bottom of Amazonian boats under questionable hygienic conditions. Not all his gustatory experiments have been so successful. But minced, spiced, rolled into lumps and fried, nothing is too bad. And Wade-upon visiting the rivers of Texas-was pleasantly surprised with his meal of “gar balls,” a derivative of alligator gar, a hideously ugly fish with skin so tough that it has to be split with an ax. Nile perch, with its fluffy white flesh, is another treat. “It will sizzle in its own fat,” Wade says happily. “Because they feed on this very high quality organic food source, their flesh is absolutely amazing.” (Farm-raised varieties fed on pellet food aren’t half as tasty, Wade notes.) The fish develop a thick layer of fat, and the best way to cook them is over the embers of a fire. ![]() When the river floods, the fish congregate around the base of rubber trees, crunching on the fallen seeds. His favorite river-swimming delicacy is tambaqui, a big, slab-sided Amazonian fish with teeth similar to a horse’s. “It’s quite bony flesh-some people say it’s like steel wool mixed with needles.” “Chuck it in some water with a little bit of sauce and that’s it, or cook it on a stick over a fire.” (Other recipes suggest grilling it in a banana leaf or stewing with tomatoes.) Amazon fishermen have tried to persuade Wade that piranha soup is an aphrodisiac, but he’s not sure he believes them. “I’ve been known to reduce a piranha to a pile of bones in less than a minute,” Wade told me-reversing the natural sequence of things. During 25 years exploring the world’s most remote and treacherous rivers, extreme angler Jeremy Wade-the star of River Monsters, Animal Planet’s hit fishing show-has contracted malaria, survived a plane crash and narrowly escaped drowning.
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