BBQ Stingray (Skate)

Recently I had a rare craving for good old Singapore Hawker food and one of the things that came to mind was BBQ Stingray. And as luck would have it, a visit to the Chinese Fish Market in Newmarket, Auckland produced a good sized Skate wing. It was reasonably fresh, had just the slightest "fishy" odour.

Did I know how to prepare skate? nope, never mind, a quick whizz through the WWW would give me some answers.So here's a pictoral account of our attempt at BBQ Stingray:

Here's the Skate (Stingray) wing, just out of the bag

Skate Wing

 The first thing during preparation is to remove the skin (I've never seen cooks at Asian Hawker centres do this, but apparently it makes for better eating). After removing the skin, soak the pieces in acidulated water for an hour or 2. Cling-film the basin and keep in fridge to prevent the fish from going off. (Add the juice of 1 lemon to a basin of water). This is supposed to remove any traces of ammonia smell.

Removing skin from Skate Wing

Remove from water, pat dry with paper towels, and spread with a sambal mixture. I cheated (and saved my neighbours from the pungent smell of roasting belachan) and used a few tablespoonfuls of ready to eat Sambal Blachan bought from the local Asian grocery store. To the ready made mixture, I added a sachet of tomato paste and minced onions Spread them over the prepared fish, place on a foil lined baking tray, cover with foil and pop into a pre-heated oven @180C for 20min. Once the fish is nearly cooked, remove top foil and grill under a hot grill till nice and brown. This created quite a bit of really aromatic smoke! Quick! Open doors and window! Fan the smoke to prevent the smoke detector from going off !! We even turned on the standing fan and blew that at our ceiling smoke detector... phew!

vigorous fanning....

 But, hey the result was pretty close to the real thing... 

BBQ Stingray with sambal belachan