Skate Wings for dinner

Skate wings
We tried skate wings at Scott and Helen’s, our lovely Irish friends, several years ago and loved them, but I had never actually made them myself until recently. And they couldn’t be easier to prepare. And they are deeelicious so this is truly a win-win situation.

Skates don’t have nasty bones like other fish, but are cartilaginous fish, meaning they have cartilages not bones. This makes taking the meat off the “bone” and eating it a whole lot easier. It’s called wings rather than fins like one would expect, because they look like wings. No real surprise there!
Skate wings
Apparently, they have some terrible spikes on their backs that often pierce hobby fishermen, but these are all nicely removed before I, the consumer, comes anywhere them. And they can be quite difficult to skin. See previous sentence as an answer to that. Your fishmonger will probably already have done this by the time you get there and my local supermarket had most certainly done so!

AND, as if all this were not enough, it is also cheap to buy. Tastes great, easy to prepare and cheap. Get out there and buy some people!! Today’s recipe is really simple as I didn’t want to hide the flavour under a lot of sauce, but next time I will try a sauce I found online and let you know all about it.
Skate wings
NOTE: I cooked 2 skate wings, one each for the hubby and I. Upon researching this article, I read that most skate wings are halved before being sold, so my 2 wings were probably actually one. The 2 weighed 700g and would have fed 3-4 less greedy people I imagine!

ASA DE RAIA (Skate wings in Portuguese)

INGREDIENTS
1 skate wing per person (see Note above)
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp flour
2 tbsp olive oil or other vegetable oil
1 tbsp butter
Lemon quarters to serve

METHOD
1. Season your wings with salt and pepper, dust with flour, shaking off any excess. You could also not flour it if you preferred, but I did like the sticky bits from the flour!
2. Heat the oil and butter to medium high and then put the fish in, making sure it has space to move a bit.
3. Fry 2-4 minutes and then flip over. Alternatively, you could scoop the hot oil butter mix over the fish till it’s cooked, but I think flipping it is much easier. Cook a further 2-4 minutes.
4. The flesh should be opaque and come away from the bone easily.

And you’re ready to eat! I served mine with cubed fried potatoes and butternut, and spinach and garlic. Deeelicious.

I thought this was an interesting article about skate wings:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2016/06/28/if-skate-wing-is-...

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