Baked Skate Wing #recipe by Maya Corrigan

Skate is the mildest fish I've ever eaten. It's a type of shark with large pectoral fins, which are the tender edible part known as skate wing. You can see from the photo that it looks like a wing. Its texture is similar to lobster. When I've eaten skate wing in a restaurant, it's always been dredged lightly in seasoned flour or fine breadcrumbs and sauteed in butter. I tried this way of cooking it the first time I bought skate at the supermarket, but the piece I had was so thin, almost translucent, that it stuck to the pan. It tasted great anyway. The next time I bought it, I chose a thicker piece and a recipe for baked skate, adapted from one on thetopmeal.com. 

Ingredients

1 pound skate wing
1 lemon
2 tablespoon butter
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4-1/2 freshly ground pepper
Optional: 2 tablespoons of white wine

I'd already started preparing the fish by the time I realized I hadn't photographed the ingredients. I took a picture of the skate wing after dotting it with butter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Rinse the skate wing, pat it dry, and put it in a baking dish lined with foil or parchment paper.  Sprinkle salt and pepper on the fish. Cut the butter in small pieces and dot the fish with it. 

Cut the lemon crosswise in 1/4" slices. Place the slices in one layer on the fish. 

Add a splash of wine if desired.

Bake the fish uncovered in the oven for 20 minutes.

Serves 3.

Using this recipe, I found the fish a bit bland. Adding capers and herbs might improve it. However, the next time I buy skate, I'll look for a piece as thick as this one and pan fry it after coating it with seasoned crumbs. There's a reason why restaurants favor that way of serving skate. 

I only recently saw skate wing available at a supermarket. It may not be offered at your local store, but if you see it, give it a try. It doesn't have a fishy smell or taste. 

Do you have a favorite fish you enjoy or do you avoid fish entirely?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit a mystery fan fest in the latest Five-Ingredient Mystery

Val and Granddad attend a mystery fan fest that features a bake-off between contestants playing the roles of cooks to fictional sleuths. As Nero Wolfe’s gourmet chef, Granddad competes against Sherlock Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson, played by Cynthia Sweet. Granddad blames her for ripping off the five-ingredient theme of his Codger Cook newspaper column to use in her own recipe column and cookbook. When she’s found dead in her hotel room with a whistling teakettle next to her, he and Val sort through the festival-goers to find the one with the biggest beef against Ms. Not-So-Sweet.

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