Customer Reviews

Fish & Shellfish: The Cook's Indispensable Companion

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the most comprehensive guide to seafood you will ever find. James Peterson has compiled great recipes and an amazing amount of information in this one volume. He very systematically describes every edible variety of seafood you're likely to find. He tells you what to look for when you are shopping, how to handle it and gives you a variety of options on how to cook it. I was particularly impressed with the "how to" photographs that demonstrate everything from how to fillet a variety of fish to how to shuck oysters and peel shrimp. The novice home cook will certainly benefit from this wealth of practical advice, and the more experienced chef will find all sorts of inspiring ideas for preparing favorite seafood. Peterson artfully combines recipes and serving suggestions from a variety of culinary traditions. He's equally adept at contemporary Thai-inspired soups and traditional French preparations. He also gives you the information you need to branch out and experiment on your own. For example, there are great charts suggesting pairings of shrimp and possible soup ingredients and a thorough offering of traditional sauces to mix and match with your own seafood preparations. This is truly an amazing resource that anyone who loves seafood should have in their kitchen.

I love to eat seafood! My problem was that I just didn't know to identify, clean or cook any of it. The very idea of going into a fish store gave me apoplexy. I needed professional help, and it arrived in the form of this excellent, and informative book. This book has it all! From the opening pages, author James Peterson takes the reader from the market to the table and answers every possible question that the reader may have about the buying, storing, and preparation of seafood. He discusses the various ways of preparing seafood such as braising, grilling & broiling, poaching & steaming. Finfish and shellfish are both identified in an excellent directory. Peterson also gives us ideas about other ways that we can prepare seafood from the simple soups & salades to the elaborate mousses and souffles. There is a glossery of foreign ingredients and a list of sources so that you can get everything needed for your receipes. If you want a definitive book on seafood preparation, this is the only one you'll ever need!!

This is a great book for anyone who loves seafood and has reasonable access to it. Unlike some other cookbooks (charlie trotter's seafood cookbook comes to mind), this book delivers excellent recipes with ingredients that for the most part can be found in your local grocery store. This is a cookbook for food lovers of all skill levels as it has an array of recipies with differing levels of difficulty, but, luckilly, explicit directions are given on everything from making the actual dish to selecting the seafood in the supermarket. If you are looking for a great cookbook to explore wonderful seafood dishes usually not found in restaurants, look no further. A personal favorite of mine in this book is the striped bass stuffed with mushrooms, spinach and shrimp.

This wonderful cookbook has yet to disappoint. It tells you what to look for when purchasing, what fish can be substituted in recipes; it has clear descriptions of various cooking methods, and pulls in a wide variety of recipes from all around the world. You'll be pleased with its detail on such basics as steaming lobsters and mussels, as well as some stunning off-the-beaten path recipes like a Brazilian shrimp stew. We have made several of the dishes in this book, and have found them simple enough for a family Sunday dinner or elegant enough for a Saturday dinner party. Many recipes are also quick enough for a weeknight. A favorite in our household, and worth giving to your friends.

This was my textbook for Fish and Seafood in Culinary Arts. My instructor was a 1st year teacher and I'm thankful I had this book to refer to. I can now walk into a fish market with confidence and know what I'm looking for and how to properly break down a whole fish.

A dear friend of mine is a charter fisherman in Nantucket and I told him about this book. He loves it as well. I love the fact that Peterson gives you several fish options for your recipes, in case you don't have access to the one specific fish needed. You are then free to use the other fish suggested. Reading his comments are insightful as well, I have probably learned as much from those as from the other text in the book.

Anything you could possibly want to know about fish, how to buy them, when to buy them, where to buy them, and the best possible way to cook them is ALL in this book. The recipes are all fairly simple - any home cook with a moderate amount of experience should be able to execute them easily. There are also a number of helpful resources like sauces, how to filet (and when not to), and different cooking techniques to achieve different flavors and results.

If you're serious about eating more fish or getting more adventurous with the way you cook it - this is a must have.

Again, Mr. Peterson sets the standards. This is not just a cookbook. It's an appliance in the kitchen as essential as the refrigerator and the electric or gas stove. Never ruin fish again under this authority's watch.

This is an excellent book on fish and shellfish cookery. The photographs are all "bunched" in the center of the book which makes it a bit (but only a bit) inconvenient to flip back and forth to find the corresponding recipes. The book assumes thorough knowledge and ease of identifying fish from a myriad of species available at large fish markets (either on part of the reader or the fishmonger - unfortunately, this is not always so). I would have liked to see just a few more of the really good photographs, especially with the included seafood dictionary. Nevertheless, this may be the only book of its kind I will use in the future.

I got this for a gift for a friend from NJ. He was always complaining about there never being recipes for obtuse fish, shellfish and bi-valves. When he opened this book, he didn't put it down for 2 days. He is STILL raving about it! Kudos!

I think James Peterson is one of the best cookbook authors out there, hands down! He goes into so much detail about the subject of each books, you feel like your taking a course at culinary school! There are also so many varied recipes and different techniques of cooking that your just becoming a better cook by making his recipes. The only thing I wish there was more of are pictures, I really love to see what it's supposed to look like versus what I made :)