The one that didn't get away

It's been a bit of a while since I told a story about cooking from my past. This is one of the better ones. I hope you laugh about it. I still do.

We're back when I was in law school now. 1980/81 probably, because I was in my first big apartment, with my first real kitchen, and my first real roommates: Steve, Chad (whom I've written about), and Brian. We took turns cooking the meals, but of course, since yours truly had the "bug," I did more of it than anyone. It was my way of forgetting how painful law school was. Or that I was dying to go out on a date, or so many other things.

I was a more adventurous cook then, than I am now. Playing with things like Indonesian food, Brazilian, and for this story, Chinese food. And never one to crawl before I could walk, I decided that I would do a banquet for my roomies, complete with whole steamed fish.

Well, the preferred type of fish for this preparation is carp. Have you ever seen a carp? Sure you have. They are those big, goldfish you see in ponds in cities, that look like they have bloated bellies and big eyes. Those are decorative carp. "Eating carp," (although you CAN eat the decorative party type), are UGLY. They are brown and green, with faces that I doubt their mothers love, big whiskers, and horny scales. But this is what I was buying to cook for dinner. And I was buying it live. "Authenticity is all." Even then I was a pretentious fop.

So, after morning classes were over, I toodled down to Chinatown with my cooler, and bought a live carp. It weighed between 8 and 10 pounds. That's a big fish. And in a cooler, with water, it weighed, big time. But I slogged this thing back to the apartment.

OK, NOW what do I do? My Chinese cookbook was decidedly silent on this, simply saying "kill the carp right before you cook it." Gee, that was helpful. So, turning to the always reliable "Joy of Cooking," I learned that "carp are raised in muddy water and should be allowed to swim freely in clean water for several hours before preparation."

Yup. The bathtub. I filled it with cool water, dumped in Mrs. Carp (the females have tastier meat, the Chinese cookbook told me. They didn't warn me that female carp get pissed off big time, but we're coming to that), and then went to my bedroom to pretend to study the intricacies of constitutional law . I had this view, that somehow, by highlighting huge sections of the casebooks, the law would "come to me." Never did.

Anyway, while I was engaged in this losing battle, Steve came home from rugby practice. He said hello, I muttered something back, and he said "I'm filthy. Think I'm gonna take a shower."

Steve was 6' 4" and about 220. With a size 13 shoe (sorry gang, straight as an arrow. I tried). I could hear him trod to the bathroom, stop, and then trod back to the front of my bedroom. Steve was used to odd behavior patterns in his roommate and looked at me and asked

"About that fish in the bathtub"

I looked up "uh huh?"

"Is he staying for dinner?'

"He's a she and she IS dinner"

"That's what I thought. I'll shower later."

The patience of a saint. A Lithuanian saint. From Philadelphia.

So, after three hours or so, I realize that I now have to dispatch this creature. Unfortunately, The Joy of Cooking is also noticeably silent on how to do this. We didn't have the internet at that point, so I'm standing there thinking "how am I going to do this?'

I had killed live fish before. I had killed trout. And I had done it by taking the fish firmly in my hand, and smacking its head against a counter. This actually doesn't kill them, but stuns them enough, so that you can drop the fish into boiling vinegared water, to get a bright blue color on the beast. "Truite au bleu" is one of the highlights of French cooking. Having done it once, I'll never do it again. But this was my model for dispatching a fish.

It never dawned on me that those trout I had killed were about six ounces each. Mrs. Carp weighed at least eight pounds. But, undaunted, I put on a gardening glove, grabbed her by the tail, hauled her out to the living room, lifted her over my shoulder and SLAMMED her down on the table.

The Bitch didn't die. She just got angry. And carp have teeth. They have BIG teeth. So, I did what any killer would have done. I slammed her down again. NOW, she's getting REALLY angry, and going for my wrist. And I'm panicking. I'm panicking BIG time, and I start slamming her against the table, over and over again. Steve by now has heard this and comes out, as I'm jumping up and down, with this poor beast.

"What in the name of God are you doing?"
"I'm trying to kill this fish"
"Well why don't you just cut off the head?"

I swear this happened. I paused, the fish in its death throes in my hand, looked at him and said "Steve, that's the most barbaric thing I've ever heard."

Then I went back to work pounding her into submission. N O, not THAT way, you bunch of PIGS. (Although that WAS the year I learned that women were not for me.)

So, at some point, Mrs. Carp expired. I don't kn ow if it was the beating, suffocation or what, but I was finally able to get her curled up in this huge wok for steaming. Yes, the evidence of attorney brutality was there, and Steve and I discretely covered it with pieces of broccoli and cauliflower before dinner. It DID taste good. But people were finding scales in our carpet, and in odd places for months.

Steve never questioned my odd cooking methods again. So when he came home one day, and found three chickens (dead ones), in the sink, hot water running on them, he just walked past and said "I'm not asking, I'm not asking, and I don't want to be here when you do God knows what"

Hey, what can I say, ya live and learn, right?