Customer Reviews

Simply Salmon

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

 

 

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!

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.

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!

While I pride myself on being an above average cook, it's confined to vegetarian cooking. I recently started eating salmon and I must say this book has wonderful recipes with clear instructions of dishes that I would be confident to serve at a dinner party to wow my guests. The ingredient lists are relatively short, but there is no compromise on flavour. Peterson lays a lot of emphasis on texture and the marriage of ingredients.

No wax paper for papillote? He tells you how to do it with foil. His explanations and alternative methods are meticulous in detail.

The great pictures are a bonus.

I eat fish 5-6 days a week, mostly salmon. I don't buy from a fishmonger; I go to Walmart or Albertsons. Most of the recipes in this book are too complicated for me, but I got a lot of good ideas to prepare and accompany salmon and any fish such as using a mole sauce or a pistou. I usually broil my fish, but I agree with the author that results vary in the broiler depending on how hot the oven is that day. But I don't lie on the floor to look at the fish like he does. If I overcook it, it means more sauce. One idea I liked was cooking salmon with the skin on instead of skinning it like I normally do. It is actually quite tasty. Very nice read.