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Very Nice Skate
Take skate, or indeed any fish that rolls up easily, make into fillets, dry them well, and sprinkle on each fillet, pepper, salt, a dust of mixed spice, and chopped parsley. Roll each fillet up tightly, and pack them tightly into a dish, so that they will not become loose. Take vinegar and beer in equal quantities, or, if you do not like to use beer, you must add to the vinegar some whole black pepper, and a good sprinkle of dried and mixed herbs with salt. Pour over the fish, tie a piece of buttered paper over the top, and bake for an hour and a quarter (for a medium pie dish) in a moderate oven.
A soused fish bake — the acid in the vinegar and beer does as much work as the oven does. The main adjustments are the fish itself and the length of the bake.
- Skate needs to be very freshSkate holds urea in its flesh, which breaks down into ammonia as it ages; a wing that smells sharply of ammonia should be rejected outright. Fresh skate smells clean and faintly of the sea.
- Skate does not fillet or roll like a flatfishA skate wing is fanned cartilage with thin flesh either side, and the strips you cut from it will not hold a tight roll. The recipe's own escape clause is the better route: use skinned plaice, sole, lemon sole or thin whiting fillets, which roll neatly.
- Moderate oven350F / 175C. The dish is uncovered apart from the paper, so the liquid should barely tremble rather than boil.
- An hour and a quarter is for a deep dish packed solidAn hour and a quarter is for the medium pie dish the recipe names, packed tightly -- Thin rolled fillets in a shallow dish are done in 30 to 40 minutes at 350F. The long bake presumably reflects a full, tightly packed dish whose centre is slow to come up to heat.
- Mixed spiceThe British blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves and ginger, not pumpkin pie spice and not mixed herbs. A dust means an eighth of a teaspoon per fillet at most, or it overwhelms the vinegar.
- The beerA Belgian-style brown ale or a mild English brown is right. Avoid anything strongly hopped — bitterness concentrates as the liquid reduces and turns harsh against the vinegar.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment brushed with butter, tied or tucked over the rim. It keeps the exposed tops of the rolls from drying without sealing the dish, so foil pressed down tight is not an equivalent.
- Packing and liquidSet the rolls upright and shoulder to shoulder so they cannot unwind. The original says to pour the liquid over the fish; if you prefer, bring it only part-way up the rolls rather than covering them. A medium pie dish will hold roughly eight to ten rolls.
- Serve cold as readily as hotSoused fish of this type is often eaten chilled the next day, and with a gelatinous fish such as skate the liquor may set to a light jelly. Brown bread and butter suits it.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck and published in 1915, gathering recipes from Belgian refugees who had fled to Britain after the German invasion the previous year — which is why the book reads as a collection of household cooking rather than restaurant work, and why so much of it is thrifty. Souse of this kind, fish baked down in vinegar with spice and herbs, is found along the North Sea coast, and the logic is plain enough: the acid both flavours the fish and helps keep it a while without ice. The beer suggests the Low Countries, where brown ale stands in for wine in dishes such as carbonnade. Skate was generally an inexpensive fish, sold by the wing, and the recipe's willingness to accept "indeed any fish that rolls up easily" suits a kitchen buying whatever the day offered.