Recipe | Wing of Skate Meuniere

Article in the Cambridge Independent - recipe: Wing of Skate Meuniere

Easter is a joyous time for gathering around the dining table with friends and family and enjoying traditional dishes that represent renewal and abundance.

Lamb, ham and fish are popular choices in many households and for my family it's fish, particularly skate, which is one of my favourites – absolutely delicious, with its mild and delicate flavour and firm and sweet meat that is often compared to that of scallops or lobster.

“People who live in Paris eat much better skate than people who live at the seaside”... so claimed the much-respected French 18th-century Treatise of All Sorts of Foods.

This seems mad to us who pronounce that “fresh is best”, that anyone would suggest fresh fish gets better with age. Laws were even altered in medieval Britain to allow herring and mackerel to be sold on Sundays as the fish would be rank and inedible by Monday.

Interestingly though not skate and rays. The opposite is true for these species. It’s actually better to keep them for a couple of days before cooking.

Skate and rays are really the same family and often the same species, the names have overlapped over the years. Fishmongers, chefs and chippys talk about skate wings, these though are actually wings removed from species of rays.

The correct term skate only applies to species caught in deep waters that are rare and often larger than 100 pounds. A ray wing though could be one of 10 species we have here in the UK waters. Skate and ray are cartilaginous fish, like their close cousin the shark.

They don’t have gills and a skeleton like bony fish, rather a central spinal cord with fan-like collection of cartilage ‘fingers’ spreading into their wings. Their lack of bones makes them a treat to eat as cooked properly the meat simply falls away.

Recipe | Skate Wing Meuniere by Alex Crepy

Wing of skate meunière with caper butter (serves 4)

Ingredients for the wing of skate meuniere

• 50g clarified butter

• 4 skate wings on the bone (ask your fishmonger to prepare them for you)

• Salt and pepper

• 130g unsalted butter

• 2 tbsp lemon juice

• 3 tbsp capers, rinsed

• 20g parsley, finely chopped

• 30g croûtons

• 
  

Method

1. Place a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat and add the clarified butter to the hot pan.

2. Season the skate wings with salt and pepper on both sides, then add them to the hot pan. If your pan is too small, cook them in two batches.

3. Sauté the skate for two minutes, then turn with a spatula carefully and cook the other side for two minutes.

4. Transfer to a plate and keep warm in a low oven (80°C) for about 10 minutes.

5. Make the caper butter: put the remaining butter in a saucepan over a medium heat until melted and a nut-brown colour.

6. Add the lemon juice, capers and croûtons and stir gently.

7. Pour the caper butter over each serving plate and garnish with parsley.