North Atlantic Seafood: A Comprehensive Guide With Recipes

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful cookbook and reference
Review: All the commonly-eaten fish and shellfish of the North Atlantic are covered in this wonderful reference and cookbook. As in his Mediterranean Seafood, each animal's entry includes an old engraving (better than a photo for identification -- except for color), its scientific and common names in various languages, a description of the animals habit's and culinary qualities, and a reference to recipes.

Recipes are organized by country, and are well chosen and edited. The only criticism I might offer is that it is hard to find recipes by type. That is, it's very easy to find recipes for mackerel or recipes from Portugal, but it's hard to find all the baked-fish recipes suitable for a dark-fleshed fish.

A great book like this should never be out of print!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful cookbook and reference
Review: All the commonly-eaten fish and shellfish of the North Atlantic are covered in this wonderful reference and cookbook. As in his Mediterranean Seafood, each animal's entry includes an old engraving (better than a photo for identification -- except for color), its scientific and common names in various languages, a description of the animals habit's and culinary qualities, and a reference to recipes.

Recipes are organized by country, and are well chosen and edited. The only criticism I might offer is that it is hard to find recipes by type. That is, it's very easy to find recipes for mackerel or recipes from Portugal, but it's hard to find all the baked-fish recipes suitable for a dark-fleshed fish.

A great book like this should never be out of print!

Rating:
Summary: A compendium of marine life, and how to cook it.
Review: An unusual format for a cookery book, or for a catalog of marine life. In fact, it's both - the first half of the book is a catalog of marine species arranged by family (flatfish, molluscs, etc.), while the second half is a catalog of recipes for them, grouped by country of origin.

Although ostensibly North Atlantic in scope, the tome omits some species which occur also in the Mediterranean (the reader is referred to the author's book covering that sea's life and cuisine). However, Baltic Sea species are included, although most of them are actually freshwater types, due to the low salinity of the Baltic.

Common names for most species are supplied in several languages, according to the distribution of the creatures. Differences in regional naming are also noted. Fine sketches of each subject are accompanied by notes on distribution, habitat, etc., and pointers to appropriate recipes.

In the cookery section, there are no sketches, but many of the recipes are accompanied by anecdotes from the author's many travels. The instructions are brief, but complete enough for successful and tasty dining. In arranging dishes by geography, each nation is represented only by a fraction of its seafood, and some could easily be ascribed to several countries.

In summary, a very good book (if you can find it). It would be enhanced by use of colour instead of of black and white pictures, and addition of some pictures in the recipes section.