Customer Reviews

The Legal Sea Foods Cookbook

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

 

 

I once worked conveniently down the street from a Legal's Restaurant, which was a good thing, because everyone who visited me had to make a pilgrimage to the mecca of seafood restaurants.

I have to admit, their fish and chowder was excellent So if you are far from a Legal's, you can reproduce some of their famous fish recipes with this book, which I might add costs about the same as a lunch there.

Yes, the clam chowder is in here. So is important advice on how to store fish you buy. You won't be able to reproduce everything at Legal's, and if your local fishmonger has less than top quality fish, the flavor will also suffer. Still, a good book on fish and if you only could have one book on fish cooking, this is a good choice.

There are a lot of thngs I like about the 1988 version of The Legal Seafoods Cookbook. It's got a good overview of fish and shellfish, how to select it and the author's philosophy on cooking seafood, which is pure New England. I grew up in New England, and the Legal Seafoods belief that the best way to cook fish is to find the very freshest, best you can buy, and cook it with subtle seasonings or just butter or olive oil, goes along with my own tastes.

Because of this, this is the rare restaurant cookbook whose recipes you can whip up after work--assuming that you stopped at the fish counter or fish market on the way home.

As the authors of this book recognised (by putting out a new edition), seafood health guidelines and availablity, have changed since the late 80s. If you are buying The Legal Seafoods Cookbook for a background on fish, which fish to cook and how much fish is healthy in a diet, you are better off with the recent edition, which gives you that information.

Legal Seafoods was ahead of its time when the owners began talking the need to protect our fish and fishing grounds. Its nice to see that they are as concerned as ever about what we eat.

Whenever I am in Boston, I am sure to go to Legals, with this cookbook I am able to bring some of my favorite dishes to my home. good recipes..

I think this is the first negative review I have ever written for a book. I used to eat at Legal Seafood when my company sent me to the East Coast. That will not happen again. I love eating shellfish and fish. But I am not a sadist. Most of the cookbooks I read in California give explicit directions for "dispatching" (killing) lobsters before cooking. It is humane and appropriate. However the legal Seafoods cookbook advocated putting live lobsters in microwaves and cautions that the lobster may move (thus causing "discomfort" to the cook).

I was so disgusted that I did not even donate this book the the local "friends of the library" which resells them. Rather, I put it in the paper recycle bin where it will never be read again.

Legal Seafood is significantly out of sync with modern sensibilities.