I'm always encouraged when I am able to take delight in simple pleasures. Take skate, for example.
I don't mean the type of skate that involves ice, ponds, rinks or Penguins. The skate I am referring to is a fish. It's not common, but during my pre-Christmas excursions to the Strip District I sometimes come across it frozen.
This year I was delighted when I scrutinized the signs tacked up above the counter and found that amongst the fresh grouper, red snapper, cod, orange roughy, sole and haddock was skate.
I immediately purchased two large pieces. I would have liked to get more but I knew I had to be judicious, as I also wanted to get grouper and red snapper. I love fish. Well, not the fish themselves exactly, but eating fish.
This probably comes about because I was raised not in Pittsburgh, but London. In reality, I wasn't born in London proper, but just outside the boundary. I say London because no one in Pittsburgh (my home since 1975) has heard of Dagenham, where I was actually born.
But, to my amazement, I saw a headline in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month for a movie called "Made in Dagenham" showing at the Regent Square, which I went to see, as I was born there. It was very good, but then I'm biased. At least I could understand what they were saying -- most of the time.
They were speaking the same as I did: pseudo-Cockney, which I still do sometimes. It's like speaking Yinzer, only with a British accent.
I speak this way because I grew up hearing my mum and dad, who were real Cockneys. They had been born within the sound of Bow Bells (from London's St. Mary-le-Bow Church), which is the definition which makes a Cockney a Cockney.
I spoke like wot they did. Fick and fin instead of thick and thin, 'Ole gawd Blimey, that sort of thing. I will still use rhyming slang, if I forget where I am, such as titfer for hat, butchers for look or bristols for -- oh well, never mind. I do this because this is what I heard every day growing up.
Fish and chips were a part of our everyday diet along with other hearty dishes such as neck of lamb or bubble-and-squeak, a concoction of leftover potatoes and cabbage from Sunday's roast dinner, cooked in a frying pan with beef fat until crisp. Or bread-and-dripping, which is the cooled fat that dripped from roasted beef spread thickly on a slab of bread.
Not only did we eat fish and chips at home but better yet, from the local Chippy. There was nothing like entering the small, toasty shop on a cold winter's evening after a movie and smelling and hearing the fish sizzling as it was fried in the deep vats of fat along with the chips, wot you call french fries.
Above the counter, written on a chalkboard, were the choices on the menu that evening. Cod, which was always there and the cheapest; rock eel, the next expensive; and, our favorite and the most expensive, skate. This is what we would have if we could run to it.
Whatever was chosen it came covered with the same crinkly, golden batter that burst into small pieces as you bit into it.
There's nothing like receiving a warm package of fish and chips when it is handed to you -- smelling the distinctive aroma of newspaper heated up by the fat from the fried contents, with the anticipation of unwrapping to smother everything with malt vinegar and salt from a very large pewter shaker. Only better is actually eating the contents.
My dad was an expert at eating skate wings. Once the fish had been scraped off both sides and eaten, he would pick up the cartilage skeleton from his plate and loudly suck out the remnants from between the bones, looking for all the world as if he was playing Pan's pipes, while ignoring the protestations from my mother that he was setting a bad example for me. It was too good to leave, and he reckoned I would get over it.
These delightful memories came back to me the other evening as I slowly ate and savored the first of the portions of skate wings I had bought and cooked. My only disappointment was that they had been filleted and there were no bones to suck.
First Published: February 22, 2011, 10:00 a.m.
