Still Life with Skate, by James Ensor.
Recipe below: Cornmeal-Crusted Skate with Brown Butter, Thyme, and Capers
The skate is a strange, undulating creature. It looks and moves almost exactly like a ray, but it belongs to a different family. It lays eggs, instead of carrying its unborn inside its body, as a ray does. Like a ray, it has cartilage instead of bones, so it can roll through the sea with grace. And, what’s stranger, I eat it. A lot of people do. It tastes like sweet sea scallops, and its texture is most appealing, being both bouncy and tender. That’s because it’s loaded with collagen. When cooked it pulls apart into long tender ropes. I like eating it that way, instead of cutting it into neat slices.
For me, skate is best sautéed in a hot pan until brown and crisp. Many recipes suggest poaching, which is okay, but then I miss the contrast between crisp and tender that you get from a good sauté. The easiest way to cook a skate wing is by coating it with flour, crumbs, or, as I’ve chosen here, cornmeal, and then slipping it into a large pan (skate wings are wide) with a hot, bubbling mix of olive oil and butter. When both sides are browned, it’s done.
I’ve cooked skate using various flavors. Here’s my recipe for it with a puttanesca-type sauce. I also love it pan-seared and draped over a bed of spiced-up greens, such as Swiss chard or escarole. This time, though, I’ve gone back to a bistro classic. Brown butter and capers make a perfect marriage of flavors for this fish, especially if you also include lemon juice, as I’ve done here. I first learned this dish while working at Restaurant Florent. Not only did I get taught how to actually cook it, I also had to skin and fillet all the huge skate wings that arrived at our sweaty little kitchen. Filleting is a matter of cutting and lifting the flesh from the flexible cartilage, its inner skeleton. Tricky, but definitely doable. Try it some time. It’s sort of fun.
Cornmeal-Crusted Skate with Brown Butter, Thyme, and Capers
(Serves 2, which is easiest, since skate wings are so large)
2 large skate fillets (have the cartilage removed by your fish dame, or train yourself to do it by watching a YouTube video)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons crème fraîche
Salt
Black pepper
About ½ cup fine-ground corn meal
Pimenton d’espelette
The leaves from a handful of thyme sprigs, plus a few whole sprigs for garnish
Extra-virgin olive oil
About 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
A handful of salt-packed capers, soaked and rinsed
The juice from 1 large lemon
Dry off the skate. In a small bowl, mix together the mustard and the crème fraîche. Season the mix with salt and black pepper.
Pour the cornmeal out onto a dinner plate. Season it with salt, black pepper, pimento d’espelette, and the thyme leaves.
Using a pastry brush, brush the skate on both sides with the mustard mix. Then coat it with the cornmeal.
Get out a very large cast-iron skillet, or some other pan with a good heavy bottom. Pour in enough olive oil to cover the bottom by about ⅛ inch. Add a heaping tablespoon of butter. Get the pan really hot, and then slide in the skate fillets. Sauté until they’re browning at the edges, which should take about 3 minutes. Then lift one and take a look under to make sure it’s well-browned all over. If so, give the fillets a flip, and brown the other side, about 3 minutes longer. That should do it.
Place the crispy skate on two dinner plates. Sprinkle it with a little lemon juice.
In a small saucepan, melt about 2½ tablespoons of butter over medium high heat. Let it cook until it just starts to brown. Take the pan off the stove, and add the capers and a big drizzle of lemon juice. Pour it over the skate. Garnish with thyme sprigs. Serve right away.