Customer Reviews

Rick Stein's Complete Seafood

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`rick stein's complete seafood' by, you guessed it, English restauranteur and culinary teacher, Rick Stein is the kind of book which promises great things and thereby simply invites criticism for its presumptuous title. I think I can safely say that no book that claims to be a `Bible' or `Complete' really does give either a total or fully authoritative treatment of its subject. But the fact that this book happens to be just a bit less than `complete' is no reason not to buy it, because it does give a full treatment of some very important aspects of cooking seafood.

The book is divided into three great parts containing thirteen chapters. These parts and chapters are:

Part 1 - Techniques
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Preparing Fish
Chapter 2 - Cooking Fish
Chapter 3 - Preparing raw, smoked, and cured fish
Chapter 4 - Preparing and cooking seafood

Part 2 - Recipes
Chapter 5 - Soups, stews, and mixed seafood
Chapter 6 - Large meaty fish, skate, and eels
Chapter 7 - Large Round fish
Chapter 8 - Small round fish
Chapter 9 - Flatfish
Chapter 10 - Crustaceans
Chapter 11 - Mollusks and other seafood
Chapter 12 - Stocks, Sauces, and Basic Recipes

Part 3 - Information
Chapter 13 - Seafood Families
Identifying Seafood - Pictures of seafood animal groups
Classifying Seafood - Species which may be substituted for one another
Index of Recipes

The easiest way to see where this book falls short of `completeness' is to look at Alan Davidson's three excellent volumes on seafood of the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and southeast Asia. Davidson's books may be more for the scholar than for the casual cook, but they do give valuable information on where to find various species, in which local cuisines they commonly occur, and hundreds of ethnically accurate recipes. Stein says very little about regionality or about specific species. Stein is a hedgehog to Davidson's fox in that Stein concentrates on grouping things best seen in his first and third parts.

His first part covers 57 seafood preparation and cooking techniques independent of any individual recipe, although he ingeniously links each technique with a specific recipe in Part 2 so that you can embed the technique within the recipe. In comparison, the best two other books on culinary techniques, Jacques Pepin's `Complete Techniques' and James Peterson's `Essentials of Cooking' have 32 and 18 techniques respectively on fish cookery. And, while I think Pepin's procedures are models of instruction, his pictures are in black and white, which looses a bit for the beginner. These differences become a bit less impressive for an amateur when you look at the specific techniques and realize that there are many techniques here which you are unlikely to ever use, especially those dealing with breaking down a whole fish.

The last part is also a great resource for the amateur cook in that it gives some ideas on what seafood species may be substituted for another. These sections also give some information on the regions of the world in which you are likely to find each species genus. As such, it gives some of the information you will find in Davidson, but organized `vertically' by genus or larger biological category rather than by species and location. This section, especially the `seafood families' chapter may take some study for those of us who slept through biology class when the aquatic phyla were being covered, as groupings are often given in unfamiliar terms such as `cephalopods'. Oddly other groupings are given in very common names such as `the herring family' or `mackerel and tuna'. The academic in me finds this annoying, not that the author did not stick to scientific names, but that there was no parallelism in section naming. The `cephalopods' section would have been better named `squid and its relatives'. The most entertaining section is the `identifying seafood' sections with what I believe are scale pictures of 98 representatives of seafood species. The selection is just a bit Eurocentric, as a picture of what I would certainly call a `Maine' lobster is named a `European Lobster'. And, while there are six crab pics, none are the primary American West Coast species generally called the Dungeness crab. The very last section, `classifying seafood', is useful for matching up a particular fish with a method in Part 1. This tells me, for example, that the north Atlantic goosefish is a variety of monkfish and the wolfish can be treated like a sea catfish.

The middle part on recipes may be where the notion of `completeness' may lead one to the biggest disappointments. This chapter, for example, has but one simple recipe for court bouillon while Mark Bittman's excellent `Fish' book has three different recipes, including one traditional French recipe and a Cajun `couboillon' recipe. In several other examples I find Stein's recipes to be less than the best. I compared his New England clam chowder recipe with one from Jasper White's definitive '50 Chowders' and I find Stein's recipe pretty uninspired. I say this with confidence because I have made several of White's chowders and they are uniformly excellent dishes. Another symptom that the book is less than complete is the fact that there is no recipe for `New York' clam chowder.

My final word on this book is that if you aspire to be a serious seafood cook, you need at least three books. This volume in addition to Mark Bittman's book of recipes and at least Alan Davidson's book of North Atlantic seafood. It would be best to have all three.

A superior book in many ways, but not complete!

Along with Bittman's opus, this is the one that I turn to when cooking fish. I love the way that he describes the types of fish -- it allows one to go beyond the actual text and thing of ways to prepare. But if you are a "by the list" cook, you will not at all be let down. The receipts in this book are fantastic and well worth the cover charge. I have had it since it came out in its American edition and am most glad that I bought it. This book was recently reviewed as one of the top ten cookbooks ever in the UK's Waitrose magazine -- and they know that of which they write.

I own over 1,000 cookbooks, am a trained chef, and a food/wine/travel writer and editor. I must say without fear of contradiction that this book is the ULTIMATE guide to all things that swim and how to cook them. Not only recipes, techniques, and guides, but insight and understanding, all written with Rick's great sincerity and true love of his field. Moreover, unlike some other books, the recipes are sorted by FISH, not by region or type of dish, so you get to basically buy what's fresh then wander through ideas for it that range from asia to europe to latin america and that are ALL spectacularly appetizing. YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK if you ever plan to cook fish. It really is that good.

Very good step by step instructions with pictures. Anyone who wants a little more info on fish should read this.

The cookbook, 'Rick Stein's Complete Seafood', demystifies the preparation of fish by presenting photo's of excellent quality with detailed instructions. He demonstrates the techniques of preparing fish in part 1, Recipes in part 2, and information on the various types in part 3.
All 3 parts of the book are very helpful, but the section that won me over completly is part 1 The Techniques, this section is beautifully designed and presented, a landmark in book creation.

For anyone who loves to cook, especially Seafood, this is an awesome book full of beautiful pictures and easy to follow instructions. I highly recommend it for the novice as well as the more experienced chefs.

I absolutely love this book, it tells how to prepare all kinds of seafood and with great detail. I came across this book in a library while in CA and looked for it everywhere. I finally found it on amazon and I am delighted with it. Dakota P

Excellent book. Recipes, pictures & instructions are all superb, easy to follow & impressive results. Amusing, witty writing style. Clearly conveys his love & passion for his subject matter. Outstanding all-in-one instructional guide/reference & artistic cook book value.

Already followed several receipes Singapore Chile Crab etc.
Well only the plates left.

Fantastic simple and easy to follow.

I started cooking from the age of tweleve in my dada and uncles chinese restaurents
they did the crabs exactly the same.

I felt like deja vu

Rick Stein has created a timeless masterpiece with his "Complete Seafood"! This juggernaut compilation has been written in such a simple format yet it covers every aspect of seafood prep that any North American would need. The pictorials for the dismantling of the various crustaceans was so clear, simple and detailed that if Rick were a general surgeon you would not have had any problem executing an appendectomy!

So many young people I have worked with have had such "aversions" to seafood and with so many of Ricks techniques/recipes we have been able to bring the fresh seafood product back to the kitchen and let the "seafood phobics" work their way through the basics of braise/saute/bake and its been so gratifying watching the transformation.

This book very much reminds me of Jacques Pepin's "Complete Techniques" and is definitely geared towards the VISUAL learner. Ricks ingredients listing in the recipe also include the much needed metric measurements that are so critical to those of us that utilize digital scales. The execution of the wording on the recipe will also be quite intuitive and not full of a compendium of Chef snobish terms and assumptions.

Most home cooks have limited space and I always approach my reviews from the stand point that its quality versus quantity and for those looking for a single source on seafood this is your book.

I am always glad to see the Saveur year end issue where the readers of the magazine share in the "Best" of what they have to offer, and every year I am able to pluck at least 2-3 cook book references that I may have never found with out these choice recommendations. This great seafood reference was plucked out of Saveur's 2008 year end edition. Enjoy!