Simply Salmon [Hardcover]

James Peterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

Simply Salmon offers 65 irresistible recipes from a best-selling cookbook author and award-winning chef. Using step-by-step photographs and detailed instructions, Peterson gives the home cook a thorough grounding in the basics of salmon: what to look for when buying fresh salmon; the differences between wild and farm-raised; how to clean, bone, and cure salmon; and the proper technique for slicing smoked salmon.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

JAMES PETERSON, a California native, learned to cook in France and later served an apprenticeship in the kitchen of three-star chef Georges Blanc. In 1979 he moved to New York and opened the West Village restaurant Le Petit Robert, where he served rustic French food until 1984. For the last 16 years Peterson has been teaching cooking at the French Culinary Institute and at Peter Kump's Cooking School, and is often a guest speaker at cooking schools around the country. Peterson is the author of five award-winning cookbooks, including Sauces: Classical and Contemporary (van Nostrand), Fish and Shellfish (Morrow), and most recently, Essentials of Cooking (Artisan). He lives in Brooklyn. New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584790261
• ISBN-13: 978-1584790266
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Peterson is an award-winning food writer, cookbook author, photographer, and cooking teacher who started his career as a restaurant cook in Paris in the 1970s. He is the author of fifteen titles, including "Sauces," his first book and a 1991 James Beard Cookbook of the Year winner, and "Cooking," a 2008 James Beard Award winner. He has been one of the country's preeminent cooking instructors for more than 20 years and currently teaches at the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump's) in New York. He is revered within the industry and highly regarded as a professional resource. James Peterson cooks, writes, and photographs from Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An aphrodisiac for passionate salmon lovers!, October 15, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Simply Salmon (Hardcover)

Salmon is my favorite fish, so I borrowed this book from the library, but I'm buying it now! Mouthwatering recipies with lots of good pictures, lots of information about different kinds of salmon and different ways to cook it, how can you go wrong? The recipes are so interesting I read them out loud to my sister, a chef! He covers the basics like grilling and and sauteing, but also gets into smoking, curing, roasting, making lox & even making salmon ravioli. Each recipe is described in detail by an author who obviously has made each dish and loves every one! Try sauteed salmon with Thai-style coconut broth, salmon "saltimbocca" (wrapping the salmon in prosciutto), or one of the many salsas he includes to go with grilled salmon.
The author teaches at the French Culinary Institute, after running a restaurant in New York City, and he obviously knows and loves this fish! Altogether an excellent introduction with lots of scope for more experienced cooks too!

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thorough Coverage of an Important Food, March 13, 2004

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Simply Salmon (Hardcover)

This is one of the easiest types of cookbooks to review, as it is largely a matter of determining whether the author has covered all the bases you can think of and whether the quality of the information on a quite limited range of information is up to snuff. As people who write these one-topic books are usually experts on that particular field, the likelihood that the book will be of a high quality is very good.

James Peterson does not disappoint us in this book all about the various methods for cooking salmon. Peterson is a culinary writer of the first water to begin with, having written many award-winning books already, including a book on fish and shellfish.

Since Peterson has already covered salmon in his seafood book, one can wonder what else there is to say. It turns out there is very much else to say.

One of the most valuable parts of the book appears before we even start thinking about cooking. Peterson describes all of the commercially available species of salmon you may find in your fish market, the relative price of these species, depending on whether they are farm raised or caught from the wild. This is important because there is a very big difference in price between the least and most expensive, and the difference in price is not fully returned in difference in value.

Another chapter in the book gives detailed instructions on how to both cold and hot smoke salmon. This is a doubly section in that I suspect the same techniques could be used for most types of finfish. Be warned, however, that unless, like Alton Brown in his popular Good Eats episode `Junkyard Chef', you are exceptionally handy, cold smoking can be rather expensive and messy.

Peterson is always an engaging writer, as his opinions and personal tastes often come through in his writing. One may object to this if these opinions are unfair or needlessly critical of other writers, but they are not. They simply leaven the discussion and make his work more fun to read. One example is that while he claims to have covered virtually every method of cooking salmon, he does leave out steaming, as this is simply too boring to deal with. I will not miss this discussion.

The presentation of techniques he does cover is very, very thorough. In dealing with poaching, he covers techniques and special equipment needed for poaching a complete fish as well as salmon steaks and salmon fillets. He is especially careful to warn the reader about overcooking while poaching. The anomaly with poaching is that if the poaching liquid is heated to a boil, the fish will actually be too dry when removed from the liquid for service. The treatment of sautéing, grilling, curing, roasting and baking, broiling, and other methods, including serving raw as with sushi and carpaccio are equally thorough.

The book includes sources for special materials required for smoking, as well as good sources for spices and the like.

This book is doubly important with the recent findings on the food value of salmon. The book was published before the recent concerns with farm raised salmon, but it does give intelligent information on what kinds of salmon are available farm raised and what species are available caught wild.

My only complaint about the book may be that Peterson describes how to create a medallion from a steak, but provides no pictures of the technique, even though he has published pictures of this technique in other books. He does not even refer one to these other volumes.

Highly recommended. Better than his book on duck cooking.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars salmon recipes, May 14, 2009

By 

Wayne Heinz "author:How to Catch salmon, stur... (Richland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Simply Salmon (Hardcover)

Jim is a master chef. Has been for years. Seafood is his forte. This book is his masterpiece.
The other reviews cover the details.
My only contribution: I highly recommend the book.
Wayne Heinz, author of, How to Catch Salmon, Sturgeon, Lingcod, Rockfish, and Halibut Along the Pacific Coast: Fish On!