Turtle Time

Fat Tuesday is done and gone. It is turtle eating time. Turtle is ok to eat during Lent if you are a Catholic. It is ok for others to eat it too, even Lutherans, Baptists, and Christian Missionary Alliance members.

The Catholic Church in Ohio has an exclusion for muskrat, which means that if you live in Ohio it is ok to eat muskrat on Fridays, though I don't feel that it is ok for anyone to eat muskrat anytime, really. Unless you do.

We were serving turtle last year on Friday nights during Lent in a cafe that I worked in near Pierz. Even the kids around Pierz like turtle. When teenage girls like it, you know that there must be something to it. We would get the turtle from a local meat mkt. Portions w/ bone and meat the size of drummies, which we would boil for about 2 hours to get tender. The drummie like portions would be cooled, dipped in beer batter and deep fried until golden, and served with BBQ sauce for dunking. Very good.

A turtle has at least 3 kinds of meat which correspond in color and taste to pork, duck and chicken. It is rich, and the broth from the boiling should be reserved and strained in order to make a soup with carrots and celery, onions, and green split peas and/or lentils.. An excellent soup that is a tradition in some New Orleans restaurants like Commander's Palace, where both Paul Prudhomme and Emeril have worked.