How would you like a fish that tastes like crab, cooks quickly but isn’t finicky about being cooked perfectly and is very affordable? BAM! I have found it…it’s called skate wing. Wild skate wing, $3.99 a pound at Whole Foods! I thought, this is just a sale. Go back to a different Whole Foods, (months later, as we do not have a Whole Foods in Columbia, and go there every few months to stockpile their wild seafood) and it’s the same exact price!

This fish deserves two paragraphs of copy. It’s a flat fish with lots of meat on both sides. So it’s like a 2-for-1 kind of deal. The meat forks off like string cheese. The “bones” look more like fingers. It’s quite odd, but it’s a very tender texture with a crab-like, delicate taste. I hope, if you ever see it in the seafood case, you give it a try. The two skate wings pictured above weighed around 2.5 lbs total and were kept in the freezer for about a month before we cooked them.

Ingredients

• 3T + 2T fat
• 2 skate wings
• S&P
• 1/2 lb. fresh spinach
• 3-5 gloves garlic, finely chopped

Method

In a saute pan over medium high heat, melt about 3 T fat. Pat the skate wings dry with a paper towel and sprinkle with S&P. Place the wing in the pan and saute for about 7 minutes, flip once you see a little bit of color and saute on the other side. You shouldn’t see any pink or redness, if you do, cook it longer.

For the spinach, use the same saute pan and saute the garlic in about 2 T melted fat. Add the spinach all at once and let it sit for about 2-3 minutes. Then use some tongs or a spatula to turn it over so the fresh spinach gets wilted. This should take less than 10 minutes.