Skate Fillets with Capers

For a while now I've spotted skate, a.k.a. stingray, fillets at the fish shops with their interesting texture and rather low prices. Apparently they taste like scallops, have no problems with mercury levels unlike other cartilaginous fish and are great value. It has been suggested that the fillets should be left to sit in the fridge for a day or two after purchase to make the flesh more tender. Here's an Australiana fact: stingray fillets were the first recorded European meal eaten in Australia.

With all that in mind I finally took the plunge, bought some skate fillets and pan fried them in butter. The strands of the fillet tear off easily and have a meltingly delicate texture and not at all tough as can be the case with flake. Whilst my taste buds didn't yell out scallops, the flavour was deliciously delicate with a sweet hint of scallop enhanced by cooking in butter. Overall a lovely meat and ridiculously great value, a great culinary secret but don't tell too many people!

Ingredients:
Skate fillets
Milk
Plain flour
Butter
Capers, whole

Steps:
1. Chop the skate fillets into good serving portions and rinse them with salt and water three times. This helps with the tenderness of the fillets and dissipates any ammonia smell from them.
2. Rinse the capers, repeating several times if necessary, to reduce the harsh saltiness and acidity.
3. Dip the fillets in milk such that the entire surface is covered.
4. Coat the wet fillets in flour that has been seasoned with salt and pepper.
5. Melt some butter in a pan over a medium high heat so that it bubbles, making sure the heat is not too high that the butter burns.
6. Fry the dusted fillets on one side for 2-4 minutes depending upon the area and thickness of the fillets.
6. Turn the fillets, add the capers to the pan and cook for a further 2-4 minutes. Stir the capers to ensure they don't overcook and stick to the pan. Note that capers add a nice tang to the fillets but aren't really necessary as the cooked fillets have a lovely delicate buttery flavour.

Some people after my own heart, and brain

Whilst searching for a clear definition of cork taint, I came across the blog of someone obssessed with Shiraz. His latest blog post pointed me to this web page that magically determines the reading level of a web site or blog referring to various levels of education such as high school and post graduate. Interestingly enough my reading level was that of postgrad, a pleasant surprise given the lack of polish, from a humanities perspective anyway, in my writing being an engineer and all.



Update: Well it appears after adding some posts I've been dumbed down to undergrad level!



Interestingly enough, Defence Industry Daily, which I have no trouble comprehending garnered a score of genius...

Pasta in a hurry

Despite pasta sauces being easy, quick to make and great value for money sometimes you just need a quick break from cooking. There are a lot of pre-made pasta sauces out there that are rather bland and definitely not worth the money, most of the big brands are guilty on both counts.

Lucia's, a local operation with quite a reputation, hasn't tickled my fancy at all despite all the hype. I found the pasta sauce to be quite bland and the service to be rather indifferent although I should try their much praised eatery sometime. In amongst a mass of bland pasta sauces I was pleasantly surprised to find two that actually tasted better than most fresh made sauces, although the explosion of very ordinary cafes doesn't set the bar that high. Both were arrabbiata sauces, a rustic tomato sauces with spiciness from chillies.

Whilst arrabbiata isn't that common here in Australia I did also try the chilli and capsicum sauce from Bertolli recently as well. The Bertolli Five Brothers sauce was actually quite a nice consistency and tasted as fresh as any pre-made sauce can be. However it just didn't have that moreness and depth of flavour that the other two had.

Barilla is one of the leading pasta makers in Italy and command a premium over their competitors. Their arrabbiata sauce demonstrates why this is so, with perfect consistency and depth of flavour that is right up there with the best of freshly made sauces. Sacla add whole cherry tomatoes to their arrabbiata sauce for that extra burst of freshness and plumpness. Whilst the sauce itself is not quite up there with Barilla's the addition of whole cherry tomatoes make up for that.

From a greedy guts like me these sauces with al dente pasta make for quite a meal on their own. Team them up with some flakes of tuna perhaps and some salad made up in the time it would have taken to make the sauce and you have a nice wholesome meal. The price premium for these sauces is more than made up with by the extra level of flavour these sauces give you. After all food that you don't enjoy is bad value regardless of price.

Seoul Korean Restaurant

It was a cold and wet night, not your typical late spring weather but good for the farmers as the cliché goes. Korean food is great comfort food for this gloomy sort of weather. It soothes the soul and delights the taste buds with food that is satisfying without making you feel like Mr. Creosote. So with all that I was looking forward to dining at Seoul Korean Restaurant tucked away in a city side street.

For entrées we shared dumplings and seafood pancake. The dumplings were half-moon parcels of minced meat with garlic chives to add some bite. Korean pancakes have quite a lot of filling for not much of the batter, which has a tempura consistency. When perfectly cooked so as to be gently crispy as was the case they make for quite the yummy morsel.

The main courses were variation on a theme as we had bulgogi, spicy beef, japchae and spicy squid. Bulgogi is a dish of thin slices of beef marinated in a soy based sauce with a moresome sweetness stir fried with some vegetables. The spicy beef was similar to the bulgogi but with the addition of a chilli paste made with fermented soy beans, hits all the right buttons on your taste buds.

Japchae, which is actually similar to my a word in my family's dialect of Chinese meaning mix up, is pretty much bulgogi with more vegetables and cellophane noodles. These cellophane noodles are made from sweet potato starch and have a nice squishy texture. The spicy squid was similar to the spicy beef flavouring wise, well except for the whole red meat thing duh, but with perhaps contrasting sweetness and saltiness.

As usual for a Korean meal, the mains were accompanied with some sides including the obligatory kim chi. The kim chi was delicious as always, with just the right tang. I wasn't too excited about the chilli silken soy bean curd or the strips of fish cake. They just didn't have enough intensity of flavour when compared with the kim chi.

Continuing my appetite of kim chi, I thought a bowl of kim chi jigae would be the perfect foil to unseasonably wet and cool October night. The spice and tang of the kim chi sure did open up the airways and the bean curd in soup warmed the cockles of my heart, even below the cockles, I just don't know.

Despite what I said earlier about Korean food not making you feel like Mr. Creosote I almost did, although my arteries still felt fairly clear. However we soldiered on with green tea ice cream for dessert and were rewarded with a lovely, finely gritty textured dessert. It had a level of sweetness that emphasised the flavour of the green tea and made you realise you don't need copious amounts of sugar in a dessert.

In the midst of all this I nursed first a Hite beer and then an OB beer, my preference was for the Hite. The Hite a smoother and more refreshing feel than the OB but I think Cass is still the best of the three Korean beers I've tried.

I miss the way they used to serve Cass beer at Mapo in a frosted glass tankard. It was a much more refreshing experience than Cass served normally. Culinary nostalgia aside I've been pleased with the hospitality and authenticity at Seoul. The staff are warmly sincere and do fill you in on the dishes and the dishes have more rustic charm and are more satisfying than the modern Korean dishes that Mapo now serves. Overall a great place to go for down to earth food and hospitality.