Skate with capers, cornichons, and brown butter sauce with Go-with-everything celery root puree

Dorie Greenspan: Around My French Table Recipes 2 & 3

This is a good recipe, and also a quick and easy one.  The Skate cooks quickly, as it is a thin wing, and the sauce comes together quickly and easily as well.  I couldn’t find a skate wing anywhere near the 6 ounces that Dorie calls for and so compensated by getting the correct number of ounces, amounting to 4 skate wings.  The recipe is tasty for two reasons.  One, skate just has good flavor naturally, and two, the sauce was good.  The sauce consisted of all the things in the title- cornichons, brown butter, capers, and also sherry and grainy French mustard.  I’d certainly make this recipe again, but not anytime soon.  Currently, fishing for skate is not ecologically sound, but luckily, as far as I am concerned, the sauce can probably be paired with another white fish, and so this recipe, and wild skate, can live on.  Dorie suggested putting the finished skate on a bed of Go-with-everything celery root puree, so that is what I did. 

I liked using celery root- it was novel and I was glad to be able to get a new vegetable into my diet. Also, it tasted good.  This recipe involved boiling in a mixture of milk and water celery root, one russet potato, and one onion.  When tender, liquid is drained and vegetables are pureed in a food processor with salt, pepper, and butter.  That’s it.  While we did think this tasted good, neither of us thought it was special enough to make another time.  I bet this is even better if you are a farmer and do not have to buy celery root- more of a reason to make it again.  But if you are like me and have to go out of the way to get celery root, you may agree that is not special enough to warrant many remakes.