Here’s a recipe I particularly love making on summer evenings, whether I have guests or not. With a small glass of white wine, it’s pure happiness.
The best skate is the curled (frisée) kind. It costs a bit more per kilo but has far more flesh, so it’s better. For the peppers, try to mix the colours to make it cheerful. Well, if you can find peppers in different colours. These days growers make green, red, yellow, orange and purple ones… so you can make a multicoloured terrine if you fancy.
Seasoned fleur de sel from Guérande (the famous sea salt hand-harvested in the marshes just up the coast from us)… from a producer committed to « nature et progrès », which I love 🙂
Thanks Jocelyne for this lovely find from the peninsula ^^.
Wash the peppers.
Grill them: put them under the oven grill for 8 minutes on every side… To tell whether they’re done, go by smell (as soon as you sense it starting to catch, turn them)… I’ve found no better timer.
Put them in a bag and let them cool. The skin will then come off more easily.
Once they’re blistered all over, put them in a large plastic bag, seal it and wait for them to cool. You’ll then easily remove the skin (which is rather hard to digest).
Cook the skate in a pan of salted, aromatic boiling water (herbs or spices). The cooking time varies with its thickness (15 minutes for me from boiling point). The flesh should come away from the cartilage.
Remove the skin with a knife and lift the flesh off the cartilage.
When the skate and peppers are cold, take a terrine and line the bottom with cling film. Start by laying down a layer of peppers, a layer of skate, salt and pepper, capers, then start again with a layer of peppers, skate… until you run out of ingredients. No need to add a binder — skate contains a kind of « natural gelatine ».
Leave to rest for at least a day.
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