Skate update, and more on poetry reviewing

Since my first triumphant experience with skate wings in black butter, back in April, I tried cooking it again and was appalled by a penetrating ammonia odour coming from the fish. What was going on? Had I added too much vinegar, causing some toxic reaction? Delia mentioned nothing about this possibility in the book I was using for my recipe.

So I did a little further research and here’s what I found. Apparently skate, like shark, can become contaminated by the urea both species carry in their skin. Not all pieces of skate will have this: the ammonia odour comes from poor handling when it’s first caught and processed, and you should be able to smell it in the raw fish. Ideally you should sniff the fish before you buy it – impossible to do through a grocery store’s shrink-wrapped packaging of course. Better to make your purchase through a fishmonger if you can find one; and of course they’ll be least likely to sell you improperly prepared fish, so safer all round. (I guess this would be more of our self-inflicted damage from allowing mass-procurement supermarkets to take over food handling from knowledgeable specialists.) However, if you do find yourself with an ammonia-scented morsel, you can rescue the day by soaking it in lemon-infused water for 30 minutes to remove the smell (and taste). I guess that’s one more reason skate is a sadly neglected fish… but try it anyway.

After discussion about the tone of poetry reviewing in Canada, I came across some interesting reading from the archives of Chicago’s venerable Poetry Magazine where they once had a major fisticuffs over poetry reviewing. Plus ca change..