SCARY MEATS, CHICKEN FEETS... AND GOLDEN BEETS

Yesterday, accompanied by Debby, Houston Steve’s ever-loving Missus, I took a ride to the other side of town in order to visit the Emporium of Scary Meats and Chicken Feets, AKA the Buford Highway Farmers Market.

Even as we speak, a potload of chicken feet and necks is simmering happily away on Darth Stover. There’s no better way to jazz up your chicken stock than to throw in a passel of fisselach - chicken feet - even if it makes for a scary looking stockpot.

It’s almost worth the drive for the astounding variety of produce. Beets, red, golden, and multicolored. (Quoth SWMBO: “I don’t care what color they are... they still taste like dirt!”) Roots, herbs, and leafy greens of every description. Bizarre Asian and South American fruits. Twenty different types of banana. Holy crap.

And then there’s the fish market, in which a stupendous variety of piscine protein is offered up for sale. If it swims, you’ll probably find it there, and the folks behind the counter are happy to carve it up any way you like. Cleaned with the head chopped off. Cleaned with the head left on. Chopped into steaks. Split in half, with or without the head. Filleted. Me, I purchased a couple of flounder, heads on, to be broiled this evening and doused in apricot-shallot sauce in a style popular in Savannah.

As I waited for my cleaned (but mostly intact) flounder to be delivered unto me, I espied a pile of buffalo carp. Technically, that name is a misnomer as this fish is not a true carp... but that is a detail not worth, ahhhh, carping about. What this fish is, is gefilte fish in the raw.



I damn near bought a couple, in order to grind them up and gefilte-ize ’em. Then I thought of the fishy aroma that would penetrate Chez Elisson until way past Thanksgiving and the consequent displeasure She Who Must Be Obeyed would evince. No: These bad boys would have to wait.

But meanwhile, I occupied myself by thinking up a bunch of random buffalo carp-related nonsense. To wit:

Buffalo carp, won’t you come out tonight
Come out tonight
Come out tonight
Buffalo carp, won’t you come out tonight
And swim by the light of the moon

And the incomprehensible (but grammatically correct):

Buffalo buffalo carp Buffalo buffalo carp buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo carp.

All too soon, Debby and I had filled our respective carts. It was time to go home, back to the boring part of town where the fish are all filleted and the meatstuffs are not all organ-y. Now: What’s for dinner?

Update: This.


Flounder - scored, broiled, and served with apricot-shallot sauce.

Now to go strain my chicken-feets stock. Mmmmmm, chicken feets.