Christmas Dinner

For me, Christmas is all about Christmas Eve, and we hosted a busy one. This was the first time we'd done Christmas in Austin as opposed to traveling out of town, and it definitely has its advantages and disadvantages (the later being a still-messy kitchen).

Traditional Czech Christmas must have a carp, even though they apparently are facing some competition these days. I had pre-ordered two, so in the morning I headed to Central Market to pick up. The place was a zoo, but my fish were ready and I bought a bunch of other dinner-related stuff. Since the fish came cleaned out, I bought some couscous to substitute for the lack of eggs (probably to all my guests' relief).

Although this was a first time for me, preparing the dinner wasn't too difficult but quite time consuming. The carp I got were fully scaled (as opposed to the leather carp you often get in the CR, which usually only have a few scales) so it took a while to clean them and I'll be probably finding errant fish scales for months to come. After the cleaning things went much smoother -- cutting of the heads and tails for the soup and cuting up the bodies into steaks. The soup was pretty easy to make although I ended up putting too much couscous into it so it's a bit thick. Meredith and Diana helped me with the breading and frying of the fish (and pork cutlets that I bough as a fish alternative) and we actually were finished cooking on time and without much stress! Rita and Jennifer prepared the potato salad and that was pretty much it for dinner.

I was impressed that almost all our guests had soup and carp. And I was glad that noone got injured by all the bones in the fish. Next time I'm doing a Christmas carp, I'm going to take the easy way out and have the fish monger filet the fish for me. Much less work to prepare and, more important, to eat.