jerseyhunter

Published: February 11, 2004

NY TIMES

TWENTY years ago, a friend who was a fish dealer in Maine sent me a few whole, uncleaned skates. They were considered trash fish, not worth selling, but he knew I was writing a book about fish and wanted to learn how to take them apart. I took them to my fishmonger, an Italian man who had been working with fish for 50 years, and asked for help.

He was not happy. "There is no fish harder to skin," he said. "None." And then he set to work with, I kid you not, a pair of pliers.

I took the fish home and poached it. (Poaching was the classic method of preparing skate because it allows you to cook it evenly while it is still whole.) Then I made a sauce based on the classic beurre noisette, or brown butter. At the table, I carefully lifted the top and bottom from the central cartilage (skate, which belongs to the shark family, has no bones), and served them with the sauce.

Now, almost all skate is now separated from the cartilage before it comes to market. You see it not only in restaurants, where it has long been popular, but also in stores. This is terrific because skate fillets, when sautéed — instead of poached — brown beautifully, are absolutely delicious and have a firm, meaty texture.

You can make the brown butter sauce in the same pan where you cook the skate. Lightly flour the pieces of fish, brown them on both sides, then remove them. Then brown the butter. Since capers and vinegar are a part of the sauce as well, I like to add just a little bit of honey for balance and additional complexity.

If you cannot find skate, you can use this recipe with halibut steaks or fillets or with fillets of black sea bass, red snapper, grouper or other firm, white-fleshed fish. The substitution is not perfect, but each of those fish responds beautifully to the same treatment.

Robertesq1

Yes skate is great, just very little meat for alot of work.