Home » Food & Drink » New Zealand Recipes » Skate Wings with Black Butter Sauce

Skate Wings with Black Butter Sauce

© Pat Churchill

A skate is a flat ray fish with a long thin tail. Skate flesh is fine, white, and has a distinctive flavour. The cooked fish is readily removed, similar to sole, flounder and other flat fish.

Skate can be poached or grilled and the classic way of serving it is with black butter sauce. Quantities don't matter for this dish, as long as you have enough skate to go around.

Skate with Black Butter Sauce

Fish Ingredients:

• 1 litre water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 cup white vinegar (or the juice of one or two lemons)
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 sprig of parsley

Directions:

1. Bring the above mixture to boil in a large pan.
2. Cut the skate into serving portions and place in the pan and simmer for 20 minutes. Keep the fish hot - on a serving dish in the oven - while you make the sauce.

Sauce Ingredients:

• 50g butter
• 1 or 2 tablespoons of chopped gherkins or pickled capers
• 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

Directions:

1. Heat the butter and let it froth till it turns a deep golden brown - make sure it doesn't get too black-looking and start to burn. The sauce is not, as the name might suggest, actually black!
2. Add the gherkins or capers and the vinegar and pour over the skate.
3. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the dish.

Serve with mashed potatoes laced with chopped spring onions, and a salad.

The copyright of the article Skate Wings with Black Butter Sauce in New Zealand Recipes is owned by . Permission to republish Skate Wings with Black Butter Sauce in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.