The Carp Lady

Ask almost anyone with the slightest knowledge on fishing about European carp and they’ll say you’ve got the letters jumbled. They laugh, then scorn the village idiot who in the 1940s introduced this fish that now clogs our dear Murray.
The Department of Primary Industries and Regions South Australia lists them as freshwater pests, and there are moves to eradicate them with a herpes virus. Basically, they’re a fat, smelly fish full of bones, and while we may eat anything we catch it is illegal to throw them back in the water. In other states, it is illegal to eat them.
But before we condemn the Cyprinus carpio, upset the carp-enters of this world and repeat Ned Kelly’s last words before being hanged: carpe diem – Latin for seize the day – there is a very nice lady in Goolwa who would like to say a few words in the defence of this fish. Call it the scales of justice if you wish, and frankly, we were humbled upon realisation that there really is a place on our plates for the carp of this world.
Meet Debbie Smith, the Carp Lady. She makes carpbana, carpwurst, carperoni, carp sausages, carp patties, smokes the carp, and supplies her good friend Karen Ross with a few carp to make the most sensational pate south of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
“The thing is,” Debbie says, “… you’ve got to know how to cook carp.” And having been invited to their carp party, if you think of it as anything but carp, the dishes are simply scrumptious; one of the most plentiful yet under-rated delights you can imagine.
And Debbie doesn’t make these carp dishes on a commercial basis or is even contemplating turning it into a small business; she merely wants to promote the ideal of eating the natural food that may be around us. Karen provides her carp pate as part of fundraising at Cittaslow’s At the Wharf shows at Signal Point, Goolwa.
Perhaps the most intriguing thing in all of this is what would trigger the mind of an every-day woman to think: “Oh, let’s have some carp for tea tonight darling.” Her husband Ken would have been horrified.
“It goes back to 20-odd years ago when we were with the kids and friends at Barmera, and we caught some carp,” Debbie said. “We put it on the barbeque and it was the most horrible fish we had ever eaten – in between picking the bones out and swatting the mossies. Great day.
“I always wondered if there was something you could do with carp, and when I retired just over 12 months ago I thought I would look into it on the internet. It was about having something to do, and I always wanted to smoke fish.
“Off I went and caught a carp. I learnt on a Catchment Management Authority DVD where one of the scientists explained how to prepare carp. People always say carp is always muddy because of the way they feed in the mud, but apparently that is not right. It’s because when the fish are caught they are usually thrown on the bank and left to flop around gasping. If you put them straight into an iced slurry in an esky or bucket it sends them into hypothermia and the histamines don’t go into the flesh of the fish so you don’t get that muddy taste.
“I also saw how this guy Keith Bell fillets the carp… how he cuts tiny boneless fillets off the belly – smaller than a garfish fillet – and puts them in seasoned flour and fries it.
“I thought, I can do this. I didn’t want to waste the bit that had the bones in it so started mincing it up, learning that if you have a very sharp mincer you can eat it. Fine bones will chop up… they are not going to stick into you.
“I started using the meat with sausages. I thought, this looks like pork so I added flavour and made other things. I just kept on experimenting.
“It took me a while to work out how to use just the flaps for the smoking.
“I have my curried smoked fish… marinated overnight in salty and sugar mix to reduced the salty flavour as you do when you smoke food. It helps to make the smoke stick and get rid of that fishy taste. You get a beautiful, surprising texture. If you called it anything but carp you would rave about it. There is that perception.
“I make my own carp jerky teriyaki from the meat on the flap of the carp – no bones – soaking it in Japanese teriyaki sauce, draining, and placing in the dehydrator.
“I don’t skin or scale the carp – it is easier to just take the side off and take the flesh off, cut it up and put it through the mincer and smoke it. The fresh mince looks like chicken and I have made tacos with a packet from the supermarket… just mix it up; it’s sensational.
“I made a Thai Fish cake, then I tried minced carp with home grown coriander spring onions fresh out of the garden, and a little bit of egg and corn flour.”
For Karen to sell her pate to raise funds for Cittaslow, under SA Government law Debbie needed to buy the carp from a commercial fisherman.
“I saw a professional fisherman Deelan Dennis – they call him Dingle – on the way to Strathalbyn,” Debbie explained. “I had never met him, and I asked him to buy carp. After he stopped laughing – he uses them for cray bait – he was amused. Now he supplies me with 20kg boxes of trunks of carp at $1 a kilo.
“I guess out of all of this I have found something I am really enjoying doing, and to me it also reminds people of the Cittaslow movement of using the natural food or resources around us.
“We are also saying there are so many things you can do with the carp apart from eating them like we are. There is the bloke who makes the Charlie Carp, which is fertiliser made in Deniliquin, New South Wales.”
It is fair to say at this point that if the carp police infect them with a herpes virus the disease won’t spread to us. However, scientists are now looking at the disadvantages that may happen with this treatment, including how it can make a carp almost completely remove the oxygen from the surrounding water which may also affect plant and other life.
There is also the theory that if the carp die from this disease they may sink to the bottom of the river and it will be difficult to dredge them out.
Let’s seize the day for carp. Give a piece a chance…