Skate

Sweet, ammonia-prone flesh needs brine and browned fat to stay honest.

Nutty solids cling to the ridges the way no thin sauce can.

Splashed into the hot pan: seasoning and insurance policy at once.

Raw green stops a plate of butter and fish reading as pure fat.

Boiled and waxy, it soaks the vinegared butter off the plate.

Second acid, added at the table, for whatever the vinegar missed.

Norman apple acid against a fish that ferments if you look away.

Fermented ray needs a sauce louder than itself. Only chilli qualifies.

Oxidised acid meets a faintly oxidised fish. Same register.

Samhap: fermented ray, kimchi, boiled pork. Korea’s loudest plate.

Fat blunts the ammonia; the ray gives the pork a sea note back.

Shared ester line, so the fruit reads as the ray’s hidden sugar.