Skordalia. Skate cheeks. Olive oil poaching.

Northeast, backing north or northwest, 4 or 5.

Slight or moderate.

Rain at first.

Good, occasionally poor at first.

 

Skate cheeks with bread based Skordalia

Skate cheeks (or Skate knobs) are the single person`s best friend. Round like scallops, fleshy, easy to portion, cheap and succulent. However they are hard to get unless you live by the sea or have a good fishmonger. If you find them, buy as many as you can, they freeze well. Use medium sized freezer bags, like the one from Waitrose, and portion them in 5s. If you can’t find them, get a small, but equal thick, piece of cod.

Skordalia is a Greek sauce, often served with fried salt cod, other fish, meat or vegetables (like grilled courgettes or cooked beetroot). Skorda is the Greek word for garlic, so don’t skip on that. It`s a pungent sauce and you don’t want to eat it if you have a job interview the next day.

There are several versions: One with potatoes, one with stale bread and one with bread/almonds or walnuts. I am not that fond of the potato version and I did not have potatoes. And I also did not have walnuts, so used pine nuts instead. My kitchen, my recipe, my take on a Greek dish, my rules.If life doesn’t give you mushrooms, use truffles instead.

Recipe:

Skate cheeks cook quickly, so they are perfect for pan frying, poached in a stew, deep fried or grilled. However I like fish poached in olive oil.

Remove skate cheeks from fridge, salt them and let them come to full room temperature. If they are too cold, they need longer in the oven and the “foolproof” 25 minutes no longer apply.

Meanwhile make the Skordalia.

Skordalia

(Serves one)

3 peeled garlic cloves

1 slice of stale bread, crust removed (or use a slice of normal bread, toast it slightly and let it cool down for a few minutes)

Sea salt

1 Tbsp pine nuts (or use the traditional walnuts)

Juice of half a lemon

Water

and about 3-4 Tbsp of olive oil.

Soak the bread in a bit of water and a bit of lemon juice. In the meantime pound your garlic and a bit of salt in a pestle and mortar to a smooth paste. Add the pine nuts and continue pounding. Squeeze the excess liquid from the bread and add the bread to the mix. Pound again (it has many calories so work hard for it!). The better you pound, the less grainy it gets. Add slowly the olive oil and incorporate it into the mix. And yes: pound, pound, pound. Of course you can use a mixer but first of all where is the fun and second some olive oils develop a slightly bitter taste if churned by a machine.

Adjust taste to your liking. Maybe a bit more lemon juice, maybe a bit more salt.In the end it should look like hummus. Put aside and let the taste develop.

Pour yourself a glass of wine. And preheat the oven (read below).

Skate cheeks poached in olive oil

Put simply, this method involves submerging a piece of fish (or seafood) in a nice cosy bath of warm olive oil and then cooking it in the oven at a low temperature to achieve a perfect tender, silky texture. How low is low? In theory it is 225F, 110C or gas mark ¼. But each oven is different, so if you don’t have ¼ gas, use the lowest setting (but you might need to adjust for the timing a bit). Dont use your best olive oil, but once you have cooked the cheeks in it and the oil is cold, strain it through a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter or muslin. Can be stored in the fridge up to three weeks and used again for fish/seafood or dishes based on it.

5 skate cheeks or a even thick piece of cod

About 300ml of olive oil (depending on your pan or pot= the cheeks/fish need to be submerged but in a single layer. So a smaller sized pan will save on oil).

Pour olive oil into your oven proof pan (just realised that my only oven proof pan is a big one. So I warm the oil in a small pot and put it into a small heat proof dish- *sigh* more washing up), and heat it up to around 120F or 50C. Either use a meat thermometer or the good old guessing method involving a wooden spoon: Wait about 3 minutes for the oil to warm up and put the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. You won’t see bubbles around the wood but the oil is clearly drawn towards it (if you see bubbles, it`s already too hot). Put fish in it (or in my case pour oil over the fish in the snug dish) and transfer for 25 minutes to the preheated oven. Think about sides.

Since the sauce has already carbs, I am going for a tomato/cucumber/spring onion/olive oil/salt/ salad.Lay the table. Pour yourself another glass.

Take cheeks out of the oil with a slotted spoon and serve with the Skordalia. Enjoy.

Verdict:

Too much of Skordalia, half was enough. Did freeze the rest.

But more important: It did not go well together. The cheeks were perfect and tender, the Skordalia just right. But the fish was, taste-wise, too delicate. Would have been better if pan fried. Or grilled. Poaching in olive oil asks for a more sublime, light taste.

As to the photo:

I am new to blogging and just moved. So I grabbed my camera in order to make a photo of the result. The battery was flat. So I searched the WWW and took a screen shot of one of the ingredients and altered it in photoshop. And the moral of the story: Charging a battery is quicker than spending hours to avoid copyright issues.