Friday, May 7, 2010

Something fishy about this...

A few days ago our friend Rich called. He'd been bowfishing and had caught a couple large carp. Did we want them? Of course! (said Jeremy). I for one have never forgotten my grandpa's recipe for carp: put the carp on a plank of wood (hickory, oak, something like that). Season the fish with garlic, onion, lemon, etc. You can either bake the fish in an oven on the plank, or smoke it for many many hours. When done, throw out the carp and eat the plank!

Carp is generally thought to be an inedible fish, though some have made it palatable. The other thing about carp, at least around here, is it isn't native. It takes over habitat from native species so fishermen like to catch and kill these pesky fish.





What to do with these fish if you don't want to eat them? Feed them to the plants of course!

Jeremy dug a couple holes in the melon patch, about a foot deep, and we buried the fish there.



Flying fish!



Apparently this works very well for raspberries, but we didn't feel like digging up our raspberries to plant carp under them. So we'll feed our melons instead. I guess the roots go down and get into the fish and eat up all the good stuff. Another experiment! We will certainly keep you all posted.

3 comments:

Jonathan Dresner said...

Oh, that's too bad. Carp is a critical ingredient in traditional gefilte fish -- though whitefish and pike are now considered the 'better' fish -- and smoked carp as a bagel topping takes me back to visiting Grandma in NY....

Good fertilizer, too, though!

Boda said...

I used to live in Davenport, IA and bought smoked carp from in a little town on the Mississippi River. I had forgotten about that - it was good.
When I lived in Kansas we would catch big carp in the creeks and would filet and then cut into 1 inch chunks and pressure cook it in jars. Most people don't like to eat carp because of all the bones, but pressure cooking softens the bones. We would make carp patties - like salmon or tuna patties. I have to admit though - I wasn't crazy about carp.
Fun to catch though.

Unknown said...

I couldn't find the primary source, but early colonists learned from the native americans to put a fish head under their plantings of corn.