A Different But Soon-To-Be- Famous Christmas Story: The Tale of Carsty the Kapr

Alex's path down a hill on a snowy bike ride. Brrr! Talk about literal cold feet!

Kristina enjoying the winter sun in our kitchen.

Dear friends,
Be warned that the following post is extremely graphic and not for the faint of heart.

Once upon a time there lived a happy bottom-feeding fish named Carsty. Carsty ate scum, muck, and other good things from the bottom of a small river in the western corner of the Czech Republic. He was very happy, and grew to a healthy size.

Then one day Carsty saw something that looked different from the normal garbage that he ate. Hmmm, Carsty thought. This could be interesting. Be bit it, and this one decision sealed Carsty's fate.

After being caught on a hook, Carsty fought and fought but was reeled in, scooped up in a net, and deposited in a bucket of cold water. After the initial shock, Carsty realized that this wasn't so bad! Carsty thought, "This water isn't nearly as dirty as what I swim in all day long! Wow, I can actually see what is in front of me and around me!" Carsty wasn't alone for long. Soon the bucket was packed full of fish just like him. (No, not like sardines... Carsty could swim around a little bit)

Eventually Carsty found himself in a child's swimming pool, swimming around with dozens of his friends. As Christmas approached, Carsty's friends started to disappear from the tank. Although sad, Carsty enjoyed the freedom of mobility, and swam around a little more.


Carsty was daydreaming about what he would get for Christmas, since he had been such a good fish all year, when suddenly he was picked up out of the water!

"What's happening? Am I going to join my missing friends?"

Carsty was picked up by a nice fisherman (who didn't speak any English).
He was put onto a metal scale, and discovered that the past few days of not eating anything had helped him slim down to a mere 2.5 kilograms.

"This is odd," Carsty thought. I've never been worried about my weight before. Suddenly Carsty found himself on a cutting board. He flopped for a moment, and then the mallet struck...

The Czech traditional Christmas dinner involves eating a fish they call kapr. It isn't very good, as far as fish is concerned (especially when we have been so spoiled by Northwest salmon) but it was something exotic for poor Czech farmers, and wanting to eat something other than pork on Christmas, kapr soon became the standard Christmas meat.

Kapr Pani (Carp Men) whacking, slicing, and filleting fish.

The traditionalists (and we saw many of them!) still come to the kapr market with buckets of water and take two kapr home alive, where they swim in the bathtub for a few days to flush even more of the scum they eat out of their system. It supposedly makes them taste better. But I don't have the know-how to gut one of these fish in the proper way, and so we left it to the professionals. After swimming in the tub for a few days, so that the children can name them and become attached, the tradition calls for one of the fish to be released back into the river, and the other to be eaten. One of my students said that putting a fish into the Vltava was more cruel than killing it, but that is their opinion...

After being killed, the head of the fish and most of the guts are put into a pot for fish soup. Everything except the bladder and intestines are used in the soup. Also added are vegetables and lots of salt, and some flour to thicken it. Boil for 20 minutes and you've cooked carp soup. The fillet is fried in bread crumps and egg, and for all the talk about how much of a bottom-feeder this fish is, it doesn't taste bad at all!

We did our best to cook the traditional Czech Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. The fish soup probably needed more salt, but the fried carp was edible and the traditional potato salad was excellent. We had plenty of friends to eat with, and a merry, jolly time was had by all.

More to come...

Merry Christmas!