Customer Reviews

Fast Fish (Fast Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this well organized book, Hugh Carpenter has distilled the essence of cooking great fish. The recipes are simple and quick with lots of flavor and the photography makes these recipes a feast for your eyes. I especially enjoyed the Stir Fried Swordfish with Asian Spices. And when he says fast he means fast. Cooking the swordfish for about a minute is all it takes. Have everything else ready on the hot plates.

I love this book because it has easy to follow recipes with photographs. Something about pictures ~ I don't know it's more appetizing and appealing to make. There are recommendations for every type of common fish in alphabetical order. Excellent! We eat fish 2-3 times per week now.

Based on other reviews, I was looking forward to this cookbook because I know very little about cooking fish. Had I realized that nearly 2/3 of the recipes I wanted to try would call for "a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill or preheat a gas grill to medium" I would never have purchased it. In addition, various recipes call for assembling a Chinese steamer (see page 17), submerging cedar planks, many other cooking utensils like fish tweezers, pliers, scalers, screens, and skinning knives. According to this book, the privilege of cooking fish requires me to practically re-outfit and re-supply my entire kitchen and pantry! Not surprisingly, I found its constant references to exotic sauces that can be difficult to find -- especially if you are trying to use their recommended brands -- rather frustrating. Finally, the generic instructions to cook for 8, 10, 15 minutes or some other timeframe followed by "If the fish does not flake when prodded with a fork, cook for 2 minutes more" to be maddening because often the 2 minutes turns into another 2 minutes and another 2 minutes infinity! The pictures are certainly pretty but this cookbook did not teach me how to reliably cook fish nor did it increase my family's weekly intake of fish which was my goal. Sorry, thumbs down for the average user/cook/non-fish aficionado.

Good book with lots of easy to prepare recipes. Had a blast preparing some of the recipes.