Seafood Cooking for Dummies

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Summary: This book takes the fear out of cooking fish!
Review: Finally! A cookbook that not only takes the fear out of cooking fish, but has lots of easy tips and techniques that puts some fun into it. We live on the Ottawa River near Pembroke, Ontario and it is renowned as one of the largest wild catfish fisheries in Canada. This book provides some excellent recipes - like Cornmeal Coated Snapper(or Catfish) with Fresh Corn Salsa - that are absolutely delicious - and easy enough for even me. I've also made the Roasted Red Pepper Velvet and Mom's Basic Barbecue Sauce and have written out both recipes for our guests who have requested them. That's success! A good, basic, easy to follow guide that's become a primary reference in our kitchen.

Rating:
Summary: Seafood Cooking For Dummies
Review: I found this book lacked so much on seafood, shellfish type. It seems it was only written about the type of fish they liked. I believe it only has one or two recipes for scallops. When I got the book, I regreted buying it.

Rating:
Summary: Seafood Cooking For Dummies
Review: I found this book lacked so much on seafood, shellfish type. It seems it was only written about the type of fish they liked. I believe it only has one or two recipes for scallops. When I got the book, I regreted buying it.

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Summary: Incredible
Review: My wife and I had the pleasure of taking a seafood cooking class given by Leslie Beal Bloom in Memphis recently. She prepared six dishes from this book, each better than the one before. Naturally, we purchased this book and now prepare seafood at least three times a week. I was recently told by a physician that I needed to restructure my diet to lower my cholesterol. This book has made my new diet regime not only tolerable, but extremely enjoyable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to make healthy, tasty and incredible dishes that will impress all.

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Summary: Not a Book for "The Rest of Us"
Review: This is a bad book. I am a big collector and user of cookbooks and I find this one greatly lacking. The authors wrote about the seafood they like, mainly salmon and shrimp. They cover other seafood but in a very limited way. Recipes for ordinary fish like catfish, orange roughy, and flounder are all lumped together. Ordinary recipes are mostly ignored, and some of the recipes use weird and hard to get items. There is too much emphasis on novelty items like 100 gallon crawfish boiling rigs that only restaurants would have much use for. If you're looking for a quick and easy catfish stew recipe, you won't find it here. Nor a recipe for curried shrimp. If your supermarket stocks such things as sambal oelek, you're in luck. If you like recipes with 17 ingredients, here's where you'll find them. This seems to me to be an elitist, fancy cookbook for yuppies. If you're looking for a cookbook with easy, quick recipes to cook the seafood you can actually buy, this isn't it. Definitely not a seafood cookbook for "the rest of us," as the cover promises, unless you're a chef in an upscale restaurant.

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Summary: For Those Who Love Seafood But Don't Cook It At Home
Review: This is definitely more a technical manual than a cookbook. It's friendly writing style kept me interested while learning about the wide world of seafood though.

On the whole, this is a delightful book for anyone who wants to add more seafood to their diet. Where it lacks is on subjects that would make a good addition to the appendix. Substitutions are probably the one area I wish they covered more thoroughly. A table is listed in chapter 1 that does give you a good idea of which fish have the same texture. This comes in handy when selecting a fish that needs to stand-up to grilling or other types of handling. As for taste, I know you should always experiment and discover tastes of your own, but a table mentioning which fish were similar in taste would have been nice. Certain fish do mention in their individual descriptions what they can be substituted for but this is not always the case. I found the mention for substituting Tilapia for Snapper under the Tilapia description but not visa versa.

If you enjoy seafood and want to make it regularly at home, this is a good book to get you started. It's an enjoyable read with truly useful information.