SKATE
An essay by author and poet Blake Morrison
Maybe it was the time and place — a warm summer evening on the East Coast, the sea a greeny-blue beyond the window. The wine probably helped, too: one of the better New Zealand sauvignon blancs, from the Marlborough region in the South Island. And there’s always something special about being cooked for by friends when they’re doing it in front of you, so you can watch, hear and smell the process rather than being handed the finished product literally on a plate. As for the accompanying vegetables, they doubtless added to the occasion, though my memory of them has faded; asparagus? Broad beans? Gratin dauphinois? Whatever they were, the main course that night — skate with black butter and garlic — tasted fabulous.
Skate? I know, I know. If I’m going to nominate a fish as the food of my choice, surely there are better candidates. Trout, sea bass, salmon: all have a subtler taste. And mackerel and sardines are more beneficial for health and longevity. If the mark of a humble fish is its availability in fish and chip shops, covered in batter, then skate’s pretty low in the pecking order; not quite down there with coley, perhaps, but no higher than haddock or cod.
Not a fish with nuance, then. Not a fish to earn rhapsodies from gourmets. You won’t find it in The River Café Cook Book. I’ve a memory of Nigella Lawson offering a recipe for skate cheeks, to be treated as a delicacy like scallops, but few chefs get excited by skate wings. When Sophie Grigson calls it “the ideal fish for anyone who finds coping with whiskery fish bones tiresome,” it’s hard to ignore the whiff of condescension, as if it’s meant only for those of us who can’t be bothered with fiddlier (more delicate) alternatives.
Perhaps she’s right. When it comes to food, I’m a lazybones. And that’s the joy of skate. You prise the flesh from the cartilage and the bones stay put. Easy-peasy. As is the preparation (coat lightly with flour, sprinkle with salt and pepper), and the cooking (melt butter in a large pan, chuck in the fish, fry on both sides, remove). You can push the boat out by adding capers and wine vinegar. There are even recipes for serving skate cold, in a cucumber-and-tomato jelly. The New York chef brave enough to make it a staple of his menu back in the Eighties sautéed it in goose fat and served it with caramelised onions, artichokes and fennel with squab broth. But it’s not a fish that invites you to be fancy. Plain and simple: that’s its appeal.
In appearance, in the raw, skate’s not plain at all. Compared with most flat fish, its shape is weird, threatening, even repulsive. “A cross between Concorde and a spacecraft,” Delia Smith calls it, but that’s to downplay the sinister side: the mean little eyes, the cockpit-like head, long swinging tail (mercifully removed by the time skate reaches the fishmonger’s slab), the wings like kites riding the sea instead of the wind. Unlike its near-relation the stingray, the skate isn’t dangerous to humans. But it is a member of the shark family and if you saw one swimming towards you, you’d be forgiven for feeling scared. Since the 16th century there’s been a fashion for preserving the carcasses of skate and making grotesques of them, so that they look like devils or dragons. “Jenny Hanivers”, they’re called. You can see photos on the internet, which you’d be well advised to put out of mind when you’re eating skate. What’s lovely on the palate is ugly on the eye. Beauty and the beast.
And skate can be monstrous in size as well as appearance. The North American variety, found off the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska, are as long as 1.8m (nearly six feet) and as heavy as 90kg (14 stone). Even those in British waters can grow up to three feet. A decent-sized skate will feed two people, one wing each. A large frying pan is essential.
A substantial meal then. But it’s not just the size of the fish that’s substantial, it’s the texture. There’s nothing flaky about skate. “O that this too, too solid flesh would melt,” Hamlet says, and skate does: though meaty, like tuna, it melts in the mouth.
And that’s my other reason for liking it. I have an oesophagus problem. Always have had. “Chew your meat 30 times before swallowing,” my mother would say but I never counted — laziness again — and would invariably end up with a lump of beef or lamb stuck in my gullet. Mostly, the offending item would eventually slip down (no one has ever had to practise the Heimlich manoeuvre on me) but one Friday evening, with steak, it didn’t. I spent the night in A&E, before having an endoscopy next morning; not the nicest of operations. It was my son’s first day at university. I’d been due to drive him there and had to miss out. Steak’s been off the menu ever since.
So skate is my substitute for steak, which seems apt, since the two are anagrams of each other. And though I’ve sometimes bought it from fishmongers, the best skate I’ve eaten have come from a fisherman called Noel Cattermole, in Sizewell, on the Suffolk coast. Because there’s a nuclear power station next to the beach, people make jokes about Sizewell: it’s said the water is warmer for bathing and that the fish come out ready-smoked. Not at all: I’ve never tasted better. Cattermole has been fishing there for half a century and sells only what he catches himself. If I catch him at the right time, in the shed adjoining his house, when his boat has just returned from its daily haul, with luck there’ll be a skate or two I can take away.
According to Cattermole, skate’s at its best eaten at least a day after it’s come out of the sea. Other experts say two or three days; even if there’s a whiff of ammonia, the skate won’t have gone off. Who’s to say? I’ve never had the patience to wait that long. As soon as I get home, it’s in the pan. Blake Morrison’s new novel The Executor (Chatto & Windus) is out now