The Very Large Trout Lover's Thread (ot)

Ya know that's not even trout,right

BG-Carp in Bridgeport Res???Wow,I never knew.

... Back at the ranch house, after we displayed our trophies, we began wondering what we were going to do with so many fish. This started a series of typical cowboy tall tales on "how to cook a carp". The best of these yarns was told by a grizzled old vaquero, who claimed he had made his great discovery when he ran out of food while camping on a tributary of the Rio Grande. He said that he had found the finest way to cook a carp was to plaster the whole fish with a thick coating of fresh cow manure and bury it in the hot ashes of the campfire. In an hour or two, he said, the casing of cow manure had become black and very hard. He then related how he had removed the fish from the fire, broken the hard shell with the butt of his Winchester and peeled it off. He said that as the manure came off, the scales and skin adhered to it, leaving the baked fish, white and clean. He then ended by saying, "Of course, the carp wasn't fit to eat, but the manure tasted pretty good" ...

It was my brother who finally devised a method of cooking carp that not only made it fit for human consumption, but delicious. First, instead of merely scaling the fish, he skinned them. Then, taking a large pinch, where the meat was thickest, he worked his fingers and thumb into the flesh until he struck the median bones, then he worked his thumb and fingers together and tore off a handful of meat. Using this tearing method, he could get two or three good-sized chunks of flesh from each side of the fish. He then heated a pot of bland vegetable shortening, rubbed the pieces of fish with salt and dropped them into the hot fat. He used no flour, meal, crumbs or seasoning other than the salt. They cooked to a golden brown within a few minutes, and everyone pronounced them "mighty fine eating". The muddy flavor seemed to have been eliminated by removing the skin and large bones. The forked bones were still there, but they had not been multiplied by cutting across them, and one only had to remove several bones still intact with the fork from each piece of fish ...

A good forager will take advantage of the lax regulations on carp fishing while they last. When all fishermen realize that the carp is really a good fish when prepared the right way, maybe this outsized denizen of our rivers and lakes will no longer be considered a pest and will take his rightful place among our valued food and game fishes.

--from "How to Cook a Carp" in "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" by Euell Gibbons