Growing up in Ireland in the 80’s, few things were as sacrosanct as the tradition of eating fish on Friday. Each week my mother would take the bus into St. Thomas Street to buy fresh fish from the markets. Each one of us had our own particular favourite, mine was always ray. To this day, I still adore it. It is this love coupled with nostalgia, which makes it almost impossible for me to resist it when I find it available in my local butchers. Over the past few years, I have done a lot of experimenting with food. Ray, however, is one thing I still cook exactly as my mother did. Enjoy xxx
For this recipe you will need a two tier steamer and a good non-stick frying pan.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
- About 800g of ray wing. This was one large wing, I asked my butcher to cut it in half for me
- About 10-12 baby new potatoes
- A head of broccoli
- A butternut squash
- A packet of sugar snap peas
- A cup of plain flour
- A drizzle of olive oil
- Cooking oil
Cost per portion: €6.80
Method:
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees centigrade and boil a kettle of water
- Pop your potatoes in a pot of water to boil for about five minutes
- Drain them and place them into a Pyrex dish, drizzle a little olive oil over them, shake them and put them into your preheated oven for about 25-30 minutes
- Peel your squash. I find the easiest way to do this is to cut off the narrow part. The round part contains the seeds, so I normally don’t bother with this it. Cut off the very top too and then you can stand it up and slice the skin off length-ways.
- Once your squash is peeled, chop it into bite sized cubes and put it into the bottom tier of your steamer. The squash will take about 15 minutes
- Pour the plain flour onto a plate, and use it to coat the ray wings. You just need a thin layer of flour on each side of the fish.
- Pour a little cooking oil onto your frying pan and get it good and hot. To test the temperature, drop a tiny bit of the flour into the pan, if it sizzles the oil is hot enough
- Carefully place the fish into the hot pan. This will take 8-9 minutes to fry, turn it about 4 times during cooking to ensure the skin isn’t burning and it is cooking evenly
- Chop up the broccoli and put it in the top tier of the steamer together with the sugar snap peas. The greens will only take 5 minutes
- When the fish is ready, use some paper towel to soak up any excess oil
- Serve everything on warmed plates, garnish with wedges of lemon if desired, and enjoy!
Nutritional Information per serving:
Calories: 566
Protein: 71g
Fat: 3g
Carbohydrate: 49.3g
