Skate Wings 8225

Nancy Young

We've all heard of things that didn't happen. The poodle being dried in a microwave, the hook on the car door handle...

Whoever wrote that about shark being served as scallops has never handled and cooked shark. There's not the remotest possibility of confusing the two. Shark eats like fish. I've cooked literally thousands of pounds of it in my various operations. Not a chance they'd be confused.

I truly doubt it in the case of scallops. And I say that because I've handled probably 50 different kinds of fish, shellfish and mollusks over the years. Cooked, raw (where safe), pickled, preserved...

I have yet to see anything that can be subsbreastuted for scallops convincingly. Or even remotely.

Then you're not likely to buy scallops and are no judge of them. But people who do won't be fooled by shark meat or punched out skate wings. They don't look the same or even close to scallops.

Subsbreastuting one kind of fish for another is something I could do all day long and no one could tell except someone extremely knowledgeable. There are four or five textures of fin fish and that's all there is. If I served a flatfish sauteed in butter and dressed with parsley, I daresay not one in 10,000 could identify what kind it is. But if I served shark - any shark - next to a scallop, the difference is like beef and grapefruit. No relationship to each other. Texture, flavor, color, mouthfeel, smell, bite - all different from each other.

Because we've heard of it doesn't mean it happens. Having heard of it is no more an indication of truth than having heard about dragons and ghosts and faces on Mars.

I haven't said it's not true, I've said that in more than three decades of active involvement in all phases of professional foodservice, I've never seen it. In all my operations, I was the purchasing agent and executive chef and we served an awful lot of water critters. I never saw it. Not once.

I might begin to believe it if someone whose knowledge I trusted said he or she had seen it firsthand. Until then... Nope. It's an unproven buttertion. An urban legend until I see something that actually proves it.

Pastorio