08/12/2009 La Santa Fe - Stingray

Video: Stingray

What you're seeing in this next pic is half a wing with the top fillet removed. The cartilage runs horizontally separating the top from the bottom. Other than that and the skin the wing is pure meat. The top fillet weighed 14lb and the bottom one 8lb. After removal of the fillets I scraped off another 1.5lb, that's the little pile of meat on top of the wing. I used that to make lunch, sauteed ray. It was excellent, one of the best fish meals I ever had.

It resembles nothing from the sea that I've tried before. You may have heard me say that I'm not crazy about fish in general, it has to do with lack of texture and fishy taste. The ray was not like that at all. The texture was like very soft chicken and there was no fishy taste. Before cooking the ray had a mild stink about it but it wasn't fishy either, yet it was like something from the sea, not unpleasant at all.

Pantoja is the expert here as he used take rays in Cuba. He explained that once the ray is weakened you have to approach carefully, grab the tail and with the other hand swipe the knife across the tail removing the barb. You can see him sort of trying to do that in the vid but then he realized that the ray was already missing the barb. We don't know how it lost the barb, whether it was during the fight or previously.

The ray was incredibly strong and there was no stopping it. It pulled and pulled for about half an hour. We put four shafts in it and it only had the effect of anchoring the lines to the fish. Eventually when it tired out you can see that Pantoja jabbed it a few times in the head which I think weakened it further, although it gave one more thrashing just before raising it onto the boat. On the boat it was more precisely stabbed in the head a couple of time more which finally dispatched it.

You're right about the bent shafts. Pantoja shot first, then Allan, and 5 minutes later me, then 5 minutes later I put a fourth and last shaft in it. After 3rd shot I played the ray very carefully so as not to bend the shafts. At the end Pantoja's shaft was bent but Allan's and mine were straight. I made a mental note yesterday that with a fish like this it's better to put the shot in on an angle, along the direction it will take when escaping.

I tried preparing some more of the ray today. All the meat is spoiled. There is a very strong ammonia smell to it and it becomes even worse when cooking. The fried stuff was inedible. The BBQ got rid of most of the ammonia smell but while chewing it would come through at times.

It was probably my fault. I was too tired after diving to fillet the wing and instead bought a bag of ice and left it in the cooler overnight after having dumped the water. The next day I worked on the wing in the sun and took breaks over a couple of hours. I then put the fillets in the fridge delaying cutting them up into smaller portions until today. I have to reiterate that still when stinky the ray meat had the best texture I've ever had of anything from the sea. I will take another ray in the future to see if when cared for properly it will not acquire this stink. The meat I have now will not go to waste, my dog likes it.

Good story.

This Ray was spoiled beyond any fix, the ammonia smell was overwhelming. I did keep all of it and grill it on the BBQ a little bit at a time, this would get rid of some of the ammonia smell. My dog ate all of it over a 2 month period. Sergio was more diligent about cleaning his part and tells me that it didn't acquire the smell and is edible.

About a week ago we caught a much smaller southern stingray, around 25lb. This one I was diligent about icing and cleaning in a timely manner. It didn't get the ammonia smell. As a matter of fact it had no smell whatsoever, nothing. It also had little taste, which is fine by me, and easily acquired the taste of the spices/marinade. What I liked about it most was the texture, I call it chicken of the sea.