Chesapeake (Cownose) Ray

It started with a documentary.  Ryan and I find ourselves getting into a lot of trouble when we watch documentaries.  It's probably a good thing the cable hasn't been hooked into the television for the past 8 months, otherwise we'd be living on a steady diet of Discovery and National Geo plotting our new lives on a island, hunting iguanas, running from mosquitoes and drinking distilled mango juice.

It was this documentary.



The short version: it's a four letter word.  The slightly longer version: there's almost no food left in the ocean, we killed it all.  We ate some of it, but not as much as you would think. 

Near the end they mention one side effect of over-fishing, in the Chesapeake Bay there is an over abundance of cownose rays.  We've killed all their predators (read sharks) and now between May and October the schools migrate into the bay and decimate the oyster population (they also get the clams and other invertebrates).  By some accounts the schools are so thick you can walk over them.

Virginia is trying to change that by convincing the top predator that cownose rays are food.  There is a small marketing campaign rebranding the ray the Chesapeake Ray.  Hey, it worked for squid (aka calamari) and the Patagonian toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass).  The state has also hired high-end chefs to create recipes, handed out ray meat to restaurants, and hosted cooking demonstrations.

After seeing the documentary and reading an article in the local paper I got inspired.  I was going to buy some Chesapeake Ray, and I was going to cook it. 

I envisioned this epic quest to locate a fishmonger who could sell it to us.  I would end up needing to hire a charter boat and I could wrangle the fish in myself, minding the hooked barb on it's tail, of course.  I would carry my catch home, a triumphant cave woman, and the twenty five pound ray would make a great thumping sound when I flipped it from my shoulder onto the counter.  It would feed my family for a month, sustainably and environmentally conscientiously.  After stopping at my local place my quest was stopped short.

Not only do they have it regularly (they catch it themselves) but they'd call me once they had some in stock.

A week later we had it.

We cooked it.

It was good.

It tastes very much like beef.  And not in the way the frogs legs or iguana tastes like chicken, it tastes like beef the way cow tastes like beef.  Salty beef, and not the best or finest cut of grass fed beef, but definitely beef.

Ryan and I skinned it, which was a pain in the ass and not our finest butchery job, and then sliced it thin.  I dumped it in a skillet with a hefty pad of butter and a good handful of capers.  (Yes, like veal piccata.)  I over cooked it a bit, but it was still tasty.  We both want to try making Ray Chili, and I think it would be good as a substitute for ground beef in any recipe.

My favorite part, it looks like butchered alien meat.  How's this for first contact?

*My dear vegetarian friends, I do promise to cut back on the graphic photos of raw meat, I simply can't help my carnivorous self.