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Carp Christmas

How is it December already? I can’t believe it. We’re incredibly busy here at the River Cottage HQ in the lead up to Christmas and last night we had the first of 4 Hugh Cooks Christmas events. This involves Hugh giving a cookery demonstration and a 4 course feast for up to 64 guests, of which the first course last night, involved smoked carp. Now this is something Hugh has done before, if you saw the River Cottage Fish series on TV, you might remember a dinner involving carp where Hugh smoked it and Gil baked it. I was lucky enough to have been at that dinner and I have to say I do really like the taste of carp, however my burning memory of the event was arriving just in time to remove the bones from the smoked fish, and my God was that a painstaking job. Until yesterday however, that had been the extent of my relationship with carp, and if I thought that the de-boning was difficult, well, that’s nothing compared to the rest of preparation!

Everything about them seemed to present a challenge. The first one emotional. They arrived, having supposedly been killed, but were still actively moving. Now you have to understand, everything we do involving anything living, we try to do as humanely as possible, so just to make sure they were dead and we weren’t going to be inflicting any undue pain before we had to scale and gut them, we decided a short, firm knock on the head with a rolling pin would be the best option. Which presented its next problem - picking them up. They are incredibly slimy. Just keeping hold of one is difficult, let alone one that is moving (the short firm knock to the head did nothing, they were defiantly dead but their nerves were still kicking). I was preparing these fish with Richard who also

 works in the kitchen and I think it’s safe to say that after we’d been there for three quarters of an hour or so up to the elbows in a sink of flipping, squirming, slimy fish our nerves were fairly shattered – not helped by every person walking into the kitchen saying ‘Oh, what beautiful fish!’

 All I can say is that I’m thrilled I didn’t have the bone search after they’d been smoked, that painstaking job was done my Tim and Emma.

 

 
And below the finished product - smoked carp, roast beetroot and lentil salad with horseradish dressing. Yum!
 
 
Nonie x

Comments

Having been to Poland last Christmas where carp is a traditional Christmas Eve supper, I can empathise with you regarding the bones.  I personally did not enjoy the fiddliness of eating this but your recipe sounds delicious.  Beetroot is another ingredient which features heavily in the Polish supper in the form of Borscht.

One thing that I would say about the treatment of the carp though.  It is also the tradition for people to buy the carp alive and keep at home until ready to prepare.  As the majority of people are buying from supermarkets, the carp are kept in large pools or buckets ready to be bought.

Can help but feel that this practice will be outlawed shortly.

Craig

Craig Buchan

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I second that on the bones! But where flavour and texture comes into it, I think the bones are a minor thing. We went to Prague for their Christmas Market and were amazed at how many people were buying Carp from street vendors who seemed to have what looked like a drinking trough (the type you'd see in fields) absolutly jammed packed with these great big fish. The water looked dirty and some of the fish were obviously in distress. Frankly it put us off buying one. Thank God! for our health and hygiene standards. I know we are dangerously close to being a nanny state, but I would not want to eat anything that was abused or ill treated.

Shell

Michelle Marilouie Elson

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