LIFE BEYOND THE SOLE

 

Skate at the fish vendor in a local market.

I enjoy having pescatarian guests. They cause me to expand my fish cookery a little, moving beyond the standard sole, salmon and sardines. Although last week I never got an eel, this week I’ve landed a handsome skate (also known as ray or rajafish, raya in Spanish). 

Skate, not so common in your fish market, is a fine eating fish. Related to sharks, it doesn’t have true bones, but a cartilage structure with thin “slats” radiating from the center. These are the fins, usually called “wings,” a cartilage flap covered in flesh. 

Skate "wings," cleaned and ready to cook.

The wings can be cooked whole or cut into smaller pieces for frying or for adding to stews, rice or, as in this recipe, noodles. The flesh, once cooked, easily slides off the cartilage in thick shreds. Skate is not a delicate fish, neither in texture nor flavor. The texture is firm, a little chewy, like scallops or shrimp. The taste is also more like squid than like sole. 

It’s best to have a fishmonger skin and cut up the skate, but, if possible, save the trimmings to make a simple fish stock. Skate is prepared, famously, in the French manner with black butter sauce and capers or, Andalusian style, with a pimentón sauce. 

I'm cooking pieces of skate in a savory fideo noodle casserole that starts with a sofrito of onions and peppers and includes spring peas, artichokes and asparagus. 

Fideo noodles cook right in the pan with sofrito, vegetables and pieces of skate.

Saffron gives the noodles a golden hue.

Artichokes, peas and asparagus can be added to the noodles and fish.

Use a table knife to push the flesh off the struts of cartilage. 

Provide guests with a side dish for desperdicios,  the pieces of cartilage that are left after the flesh has been removed. 

Noodle Casserole with Skate

Cazuela de Fideos con Raya

Fideo noodles are short vermicelli that come in varying thickness from thinnest angel hair, #00, to gruesa, thick (#4). Use the thick kind for this recipe. If not available, use spaghetti broken into 2-inch lengths. Adjust cooking time to the time given on the fideo package. For instance, the pieces of fish will take about 10 minutes to cook in the broth. If the noodles take longer, add them before the fish. 

You can add shrimp, squid or clams to this noodle fish with the skate. If skate is not on your radar, make the fideo recipe with monkfish or other firm fish.

Cut skate wings into pieces.

Serves 4.

1  pound skate wings

Salt

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup chopped onion

½ cup peeled and chopped red bell pepper** (see below for how-to)

½ cup chopped green pepper

4 cloves garlic, chopped

½ cup grated or crushed tomatoes

½ teaspoon coarse salt

2 peppercorns

20 fried or toasted almonds

¼ teaspoon saffron threads

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

½ teaspoon cumin

¼ cup white wine

1 medium potato (4 ½ ounces)

1 large artichoke

4 cups fish stock or water

1 bay leaf

1 ½ cups (about 7 ½ ounces) #4 fideo noodles 

1 cup shelled peas

Asparagus spears, cooked (optional)

Chopped parsley or mint to garnish

Use scissors to trim the ragged edges of the wings. With a sharp knife, cut them between the “slats” into about 8 pieces. Salt the fish and allow it to come to room temperature.

Crush almonds in mortar.

Heat the oil in a cazuela or wide pan. Sauté the onion on medium heat until softened, 5 minutes. Add the two kinds of peppers and garlic. Sauté them 3 minutes. Add the grated tomatoes and fry 5 minutes.

Crush the coarse salt in a mortar with the peppercorns and almonds. Add the saffron, chopped parsley and cumin. Grind all of the ingredients as finely as possible. Stir in the wine and mix to a paste. Stir the mortar blend into the sofrito in the pan. 

Add noodles to the pan with vegetables.

Cut the potato into chunks and add to the pan with the stock or water and bay leaf. Taste for salt and add salt if needed (if using stock, salt may not be necessary).

Snap off outer leaves of the artichoke. Cut crosswise leaving the artichoke bottom and discarding the leaf tips. Cut the bottom into quarters, remove fuzzy choke. Add the quarters immediately to the liquid in the pan. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are partially cooked, 10 minutes. 

Raise the heat to medium-high. Add the fideo noodles to the pan with the peas. Cook 2 minutes. Add the pieces of fish to the pan. Lower the heat to medium. Cook 5 minutes. 

Turn the pieces of fish over. Cook until potatoes, fideos and fish are done, about 5 minutes longer. There should still be some liquid left, so the noodles are juicy. Allow the pan to set 5 minutes. Serve sprinkled with parsley or mint.

**Yes, you can peel a bell pepper, whether to use raw or cooked. Use a vegetable peeler and remove skin. Where the peeler doesn't reach in the crevices, either leave the skin or segment the pepper in the folds and peel most of the inaccessible strips. 

More recipes with fideo noodles:

Scallop and Noodle Casserole.

Seafood and Pasta Paella (Fideuá).

Fideo Noodles with Tofu and Vegetables.

Shrimp and Fideo Noodle Salad.

Noodle Soup with Garnishes (Sopa de Picadillo).

WHEN YOU HAVEN’T GOT AN EEL

 

All-i-pebre means "garlic and pepper." It's a Valencian fish stew usually made with eel. This version is with monkfish.

Writing about the foods of València recently, I was reminded of my visit to the great Mercat Central de València where, amongst other fabulous produce, seafood and meats, I saw tanks of live eels. 

Eels are fished in the nearby Albufera, wetlands where rice is grown, not far from València capital. At Restaurante Matandeta in Alfafar, while waiting for our paella to cook, I sampled a dish of eels, prepared all-i-pebre. 

“All” means “garlic” in Valencian lingo and pebre is “pepper,” in this case, specifically dried red peppers that are ground to powder—pimentón. Pimentón here is the same as sweet paprika, not smoked pimentón de la Vera. 

Eel is anguila, a fish that spawns in the Sargasso Sea between Bermuda and the Azores. The larvae migrate with the Gulf Stream to estuaries on the European continent. Tiny elvers, netted at this stage, are called angulas and are prized catch. The ones that escape capture make their way up rivers and spend the next 10 years growing into full-sized eels. 

Where I live, eel does not turn up in the local markets. But this simple fishermen’s stew can be made with almost any seafood. Monkfish (angler or, in Spanish, rape) is a firm-fleshed fish that is perfect. Rosada would also be a good substitute for eel.

Pimentón gives the ruddy color to the stew of fish and potatoes. A little hot chile adds pungency.

Monkfish with Garlic and Pimentón

All-i-Pebre de Rap

Vary the amount of garlic and pimentón to suit your tastes. This is one dish in which a dose of hot chile—guindilla—is used. Again, to taste.

Monkfish instead of eel.

1 pound 14 ounces boneless monkfish 

Salt

6 cloves garlic

Parsley leaves

1 teaspoon coarse salt

2 pounds potatoes 

½ cup olive oil

Crushed dry red chile (to taste)

2 tablespoons pimentón (paprika)

4 cups water or fish stock

Chopped parsley to garnish

Cut the fish fillets crosswise into 2 ½-inch chunks. Sprinkle them with salt and allow to come to room temperature.

Peel the cloves of garlic, chop them coarsely and place in a mortar with a few leaves of parsley and the coarse salt. Crush the garlic to a paste.

Add pimentón to potatoes.

Peel and snap the potatoes into, roughly, 1- to 1 ½- inch pieces. Heat the oil in an earthenware cazuela or deep pan on medium heat. Fry the potatoes slowly, turning frequently, 5 minutes. The potatoes shouldn’t brown. Scrape the crushed garlic into the pan with the potatoes. Stir and fry 5 minutes more.

Add the crushed chile and pimentón to the potatoes. Add the water or stock. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce heat and cook 5 minutes. Add the chunks of fish and cook, turning the fish once, until it is cooked through and potatoes are tender, 10 to 15 minutes.  Let rest 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with chopped parsley.

More foods from Valencia here.

A YIN-YANG SALAD

 

Black sesame seeds.

An open packet of black sesame seeds reminded me of gomasio, a sesame-salt condiment that I used to make, way back in my hippy days (late 1960s), when we dabbled in Macrobiotics. 

Some of the expats in the Spanish village where I still live came round with a book called You Are All Sanpaku by George Ohsawa (translated by William Dufty). Sanpaku is a Japanese term meaning “the whites of your eyes are showing beneath the pupils”—a sure sign of physical and spiritual imbalance, according to the book. 

We checked each other out. If the whites were showing, you were told, “Hey, man, your Yin and Yang are out of whack.” The cure was a Macrobiotic diet, consisting of whole grains, organic and seasonal vegetables, little meat and fat, absolutely no sugar at all.  That may sound like an ideal diet for the whole world, but it had some severe restrictions. It was almost the antithesis of the Mediterranean diet and here we were, living in sight of the Med. 

For instance, tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes were to be completely avoided, because they were the most yin of vegetables.  Poison to the system. Fruit, too, was yin. An occasional apple might be acceptable, if it was baked to increase its yang properties. But citrus? No way. Maybe one orange a year. And we lived in an orange grove. Salads and raw vegetables were yin. Adios, gazpacho. Yeast was yin, so macrobiotic bread, as produced by local practitioners, was as dense as lead weights.

Nevertheless, we gave it a try, beginning with the 10-day brown rice fasting diet, which was supposed to sort out the body´s balance. At the end of which, I had gained weight. You were supposed to restrict fluid intake so you only peed once a day. I never drank a drop and still peed six or seven times. I was perpetually yinned-out.

But, I picked-up some new habits during my macrobiotic period. One was to eat slowly, chew 100 times, to reduce the grain to liquid before swallowing. Not that I count anymore. In a little macrobiotic cookbook, I found a really great recipe for roasted brown rice with vegetables that I still make. And, in this white-bread nation, Spain, I got hooked on whole grains. I also acquired a real fondness for that yang condiment, gomasio, toasted sesame seed ground with sea salt.

This week, once I had made a batch of gomasio, I experimented a bit, sprinkling it over some very yin-ful strawberries. Add some olive oil dressing, call it salad. I make no claims that this salad balances yin and yang elements. In fact, I imagine it bends strongly toward yin. But it is gorgeous and, with the contrasts in flavors and textures, quite delicious.

Sliced strawberries with vinaigrette, balls of goat cheese and a few rose petals amongst the salad greens. The salad is speckled with toasted black sesame-salt.

Strawberry Salad with Goat Cheese and Sesame Salt

Ensalada de Fresas con Queso de Cabra y Sal de Sésamo

Use either black or tan sesame seed (called ajonjolí or sésamo in Spanish) for the gomasio. The cheese balls, with two kinds of goat cheese, might be replaced with cubes of mozzarella, feta or any queso fresco. Because the roses in my garden are fabulous right now, I’ve added (optional) rose petals to the salad. Black olives or blueberries make a visual contrast with the red strawberries. If you have a choice, go for the briny olives. Blueberries are pretty, but insipid.

For the sesame salt (gomasio):

3 tablespoon black or tan sesame seeds

1 ½ teaspoons coarse sea salt

Crushed sesame and salt.

Toast the sesame seeds in a heavy skillet on medium heat until they are lightly toasted and fragrant. (It may be difficult to judge the color for the black seeds.) Add the salt to the sesame seeds and toast a few seconds so the mixture is completely dry.

Remove the skillet from the heat and empty the sesame seeds into a bowl. Let them cool. Working in small batches, crush the sesame seeds and salt in a mortar. Store the sesame salt in a jar with a tight lid.

Fresh goat cheese.

For the cheese balls (bolitas de queso):

Makes about 2-dozen (1-inch) balls.

3 ½ ounces goat cheese log (½ cup diced), room temperature

3 ½ ounces fresh goat cheese (½ cup diced), room temperature 

Milk or plain yogurt to thin the cheese

Olive oil for shaping

Place the two kinds of diced cheese in a mini-processor. Process until smooth and creamy, adding milk or yogurt a teaspoon at a time if mixture is too stiff to process. 

Oil a flat container. Oil the hands. Shape the cheese mixture into marble-sized balls. Place them in the container and chill them, covered, until ready to assemble the salad.

For the dressing (aliño para ensalada):

Makes more dressing than is needed for the strawberry salad

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

½ teaspoon pimentón de la Vera (smoked pimentón)

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon brine from a jar of olives or capers

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Whisk together the mustard, pimentón, salt and vinegar. Stir in the brine. Whisk in the oil until dressing is emulsified. 

For the salad:

Serves 4 to 6.

12 ounces strawberries (2 cups sliced)

¼ cup pitted black olives (or blueberries)

3 tablespoons salad dressing (above)

1 to 2 cups mesclun, microgreens, rucula, red endive or baby spinach 

Rose petals (optional)

Cheese balls (recipe above)

Pea shoots (optional)

Basil leaves

Sesame salt (recipe above)

Wash the strawberries, remove hulls and slice or quarter them. Place them in a bowl with the olives or blueberries and add 2 tablespoons of the prepared dressing. 

Place the mesclun or other salad greens in a small bowl and toss them lightly with 1 tablespoon of the dressing. 

Arrange mesclun/greens on a platter or individual salad plates with the rose petals, if using. Spread the strawberries on the greens. Add the balls of cheese. Garnish with pea shoots, if using, and basil. Sprinkle the strawberries and cheese balls with sesame salt.

More recipes with strawberries:

Strawberries with Custard Pudding (Natillas) and Meringue.

Instant Strawberry Shortcake.

Strawberries with Sponge Cake.

Strawberries with Orange-Blossom Sauce.