Ice Skating

Right before we went to Hot Doug's, we went - as always - to Fishguy Market on the corner of Elston and Montrose (http://www.fishguy.com/).  They had a very good selection, but the skate wing on the bone particularly caught my eye.  I have cooked skate many times, but never "on the bone," so my interest was naturally piqued.

I got home and looked up a classic skate preparation and then changed it to suit my preferances.  It was basically a white wine and lemon sauce, but its made in the same pan as the skate.

Here is the recipe (I'll give you the changes that I would make after):

Skate
2 skate wings, on the bone
flour
kosher salt
pepper
olive oil
1/2 lemon
3/4 cup white wine, preferably sauvignon blanc
1/2 stick butter, cut into 4 pieces
pinch of dried thyme

1.  Preheat oven to 400.
2.  Film the bottom of the pan with olive oil and heat over medium-high heat.  Lightly salt and pepper both sides of the fish.
3.  Dredge both sides of the skate in flour and shake off any excess.
4.  When olive oil is very hot, put the skate in the pan for 4 minutes until bottom is golden brown.
5.  Flip the fish to the other side and put pan in the oven for 3-4 more minutes.
6.  Remove fish from pan to serving plate and tent with foil.
7.  Return the pan to the stovetop on medium heat (careful, the handle is probably really hot, so cover it with a towel).
8.  Deglaze the pan with the wine, scraping the bottom to get up all the tasty fish stuck to the pan.  When it comes to a boil, squeeze in the lemon juice.
9.  Add thyme to  pan and continue to cook until the liquid reduces by half.
10.  Whisk in butter one piece at a time.  Add a new piece only after the previous piece has melted.
11.  Serve the fish and spoon some of the sauce over it.

I thought that the sauce had too much lemon in it, so next time I will cut it down by half and only use 1/4 of a lemon.  I think I might also add some capers to get some more salinity added to the sauce.  The crust on the fish was nice, so I would keep that the same.

One thing that was kind of an unpleasant surprise was that the whole wing was full of bones, so it was quite difficult to eat before you got the hang of it.  I served it with roasted potatoes, which were nice.