Chef Luis Herrera remembers when he first began cooking with skate: New York Metropolis, 2013. The now-closed Italian restaurant the place he labored served the fish as piccata, pan-seared with butter and capers. “I keep in mind the considered it at that second,” Herrera says. “How does the fish have virtually a chicken-like texture?” As a result of skate has cartilage as a substitute of the standard bones, its flesh will be lower as filets off its wing, or served on the wing, as some eating places do, for diners to scrape off themselves. A white fish like hake will flake, however skate is dense and ropy.
In the present day, Herrera is well-acquainted with skate, which is a part of the ray household. When it’s on the menu at Ensenada, the seafood restaurant in Brooklyn the place he’s govt chef and accomplice, cooks batter the flesh, fry it, and serve it with mole, pickled fennel, and tortillas for DIY tacos. Final yr, former Eater NY critic Ryan Sutton thought-about it his “taco of the yr.”
Ensenada’s dish is only one instance of skate’s rising buzz. In 2016, the Washington Submit referred to as it “a perplexing fish,” writing that, in the US, solely high-end eating places like Le Bernardin cared to take the time to work with it, and residential cooks didn’t use it both. However lately, skate’s prominence — and coolness — has risen at wine bars and eating places throughout the nation, which is promising for cooks, house cooks, and fishers alike.
Some cooks are drawing inspiration from skate’s larger presence overseas. Laila Bazahm, of the brand new tapas spot El Raval in Austin, Texas, hyperlinks the fish to her former properties of Spain and Singapore. Within the hawker facilities of the latter, skate is rubbed with belacan, wrapped in banana leaves, and grilled. In Barcelona, it’s cooked a la plancha. In a nod to that have — El Raval is known as for a Barcelona neighborhood — Bazahm is growing a dish that includes skate cooked in a charcoal oven, then completed with Basque pil pil sauce, a cod-based emulsion.
Although skate and different rays are additionally widespread fare in England, the place he grew up, chef Ed Szymanski doesn’t recall seeing the fish as a lot when he moved to New York Metropolis in 2014. “Now it’s extra ubiquitous,” Szymanski says. His buzzy New York Metropolis eating places Dame and Lord’s have doubtless helped facilitate skate’s prevalence within the metropolis.
His favourite preparation to date has been Dame’s skate Kiev, which confirmed off the fish two methods: half cooked in brown butter, and half wrapped round parsley butter earlier than being dredged and fried. And though skate typically seems on menus as a wing or filet, Dame additionally makes use of the area of interest skate cheeks, which it serves with kedgeree rice.
Fried skate is particularly well-liked. That’s the way it has lately appeared at NYC’s Atoboy, Cervo’s, Patti Ann’s, and Place des Fêtes. At Chicago’s Obelix, it takes a Japanese bent as a skate wing katsu, and at LA’s Majordomo, fried skate has been served with fried rice. Within the U.Ok., it’s often utilized in fish and chips. In the meantime, following the French custom of pan-searing, Chicago’s Le Tour serves it with capers and brown butter.
There are compelling arguments in favor of skate. For one factor, a pound of cod filets retails for $14.99 from New York Metropolis seafood purveyor Aqua Greatest, whereas the identical quantity of skate wing, which may also be purchased fileted, runs $7.99; a pound of halibut is $34.99. “It’s fairly straightforward to get,” Herrera says. “We’ve by no means had an issue with a scarcity of skate.”
That abundance is why chef Nick Deutmeyer of Harvest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, likes it. “There’s loads of species which are eaten fairly extensively,” Deutmeyer says. “If we preserve consuming them the way in which that we’re, there’s not likely [going to be] something left. I believe skate is a kind of fish that could be a little lesser-known, and so, not as many individuals eat it.” The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch lists a number of sorts of skate as licensed, or in any other case not depleted or experiencing overfishing.
Presently at Harvest, Deutmeyer encrusts skate with cornmeal and serves it with clam chowder. Whereas the eating public’s lack of familiarity with the fish would possibly dissuade some cooks from placing skate on the menu, Deutmeyer says diners have an interest; skate sells “simply as properly” as another white fish. A restaurant introduction would possibly then push diners to think about the fish at house.
Jared Auerbach, CEO of the Boston-based seafood firm Pink’s Greatest, is happy to listen to that skate is popping up on menus “as a result of that’s what we’re seeing loads of in our oceans,” he says. Although skate fishing has at all times been sturdy in New England, “traditionally, we’ve had loads of dependence on international markets as demand facilities for skate,” he says. Korea, for instance, imports massive quantities from the U.S., and cooks there put together it some ways. It’s not unusual to see skate in Korean eating places in Los Angeles and Honolulu — Kobawoo serves it steamed with its bo ssam and Sorabol mixes it uncooked into naengmyeon.
Along with his firm appearing as an middleman between business fishers and wholesalers and distributors, “it’s our job to make the market” by creating demand for “very, very plentiful native seafood,” Auerbach says. West Coast skate is equally underutilized regardless of abundance, as San Francisco chef Peter Hemsley has famous.
Pink’s Greatest hopes to get home customers to be “extra open-minded and versatile” concerning the seafood they devour, Auerbach explains. That might appear to be extra folks considering that dinner doesn’t must be “haddock tonight, it doesn’t matter what, as a result of I like haddock,” he says, however shifting their diets to incorporate a larger range of fish, together with skate.
Whereas loads of skate continues to be exported, that international demand has been tempered by a rise in home demand, Auerbach says. Whereas house cooks have been as soon as hindered by a “lack of spontaneous availability,” because the Washington Submit wrote, it’s now simpler — not less than in NYC — to even order skate on-line. In line with Auerbach, “After we land loads of skate, folks purchase it.”
At Lord’s, serving skate has include one sudden threat. At occasions, the restaurant has served each steak and skate on the identical menu. “Individuals mishear one another they usually order the fallacious factor — after which the fish comes out they usually need the meat, or vice versa,” Szymanski says. “It’s not best, however it occurs.”