2 comments about America's Favorite Fish Recipes: More Than 180 Mouthwatering Recipes from Fishing Guides and Professional Chefs (The Freshwater Angler).

1. This book contains great recipes. I have tried a few, and they are excellent.



2. Medical research shows that fish in ones diet that is rich in the omega oil is very important, and fish has less negatives as far as fat and cholesterol and is almost fool proof as far as cooking goes and this cookbook would be an asset in any good cooks library. The recipes are easy to follow and the photography and graphics are wonderful. But I have come to expect that from The Hunting & Fishing Library series and I recommend all the books they produce.

   Not only will you learn how to safely handle fish and store or freeze it but you will learn that there are bad ways to cook fish that in essence probably is the biggest reason some people try fish and never want it again. There are simple recipes for day to day use and some excellent ones for when company is due for dinner.

   I wager that a fair number of anti-fish eaters will rediscover the pleasure of fish (my favorites are salmon and trout) once they savor the recipes in this book. And if you have someone in the family who loves fishing, this makes a great gift.

1 comments about Fish Grilled & Smoked: 150 Recipes for Cooking Rich, Flavorful Fish on the Backyard Grill, Streamside, or in a Home Smoker.

1. This is without a doubt one of the best books ever for smoking fish on your backyard grill. ANYONE can do it, even my daughter who loves to help now. The corn smoking idea is just great. Love the smell of the corn kernels while they are smoking and the taste.
   This book SMOKES!
   JW

2 comments about Jerky: Make Your Own Delicious Jerky and Jerky Dishes Using Beef, Venison, Fish, or Fowl.

1. Livingston takes a definite outdoorsman approach to jerky. He is sharply critical of USDA safety regulations, and he doesn't believe in nitrate cure as a preservative (he includes it in a few recipes, but says it's for preserving the color of the meat, not as a safety procedure). Some of the air-drying recipes gave me the willies just thinking about them! Livingston's approach to safety is to use meat from trusted sources, which often means avoiding the local supermarket in favor of a butcher or processor. He says if you use meat from known sources you'll avoid many problems. Good advice, but not always practical.
   The book is lively and readable, but too many of the recipes are for curing 10 pounds of meat -- I wish he'd included smaller-quantity versions of some of them.
   This is NOT the definitive book for beginning jerky-makers, but it's probably a good buy for an experienced jerky-maker to add to his/her library.



2. Whether you are a big fan of jerky, or a fan of big (lots) of jerky, this book has something for you. I never knew there were so many different recipes for jerky until I bought this book. The results taste far better than anything I've ever bought in a store. I highly recommend the book. Recipes frequently call for several pounds of meat, but you can either scale them down, or just use less meat and make more marinade than you need. The novice chef needn't worry: The recipes are very simple.

   Another review notes that the author deviates from standard guidelines when it comes to cooking temperatures, and that's true. However, most recipes call for temperatures of 140 degrees, which is just slightly below the minimum temperature of 145 recommended by the FDA. When you consider that jerky spends 8-10 hours in the oven, I don't think food safety is an issue at these temperatures for anything other than pork, which the author recommends against.

   Recipes that call for lower temperatures are left to the reader's discretion, but clearly marked as such.

5 comments about 1,000 Classic Recipes From Around the World.

1. I am the only one in a household of 5 who isn't on a diet. Because of that, I am limited to microwave meals for just me or cooking diet food (yuck) for the whole family. When I looked through this book, I saw that many of the recipes are great for dieters. I went through my whole book and marked the weight watcher point values on each page and make wonderfully tasting meals that make us ALL happy. Even I will eat them! The recipes range from simple to specific, but all of them thus far have been fantastic. I make the Festive Apple Chicken as often as I can.



2. I have had this book for a few years and I keep returning to it for new and old cooking ideas. It offers a variety of recipes on all types of food. I love it! I bought at least 3 other copies for relatives and friends (at their request :))



3. I have only tried five or six recipes so far and have been extremely happy with the dinners I've made to date. Recipes are easy to follow and very tasty. I would highly recommend this cookbook.



4. This is the second copy I have bought, relatives keep taking it! What a wonderful collection!



5. I love cooking with this book because it has many pictures that help me to decide when I want to cook. I recommend it!

1 comments about Fish (Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library).

1. This slim volume of 44 recipes offers a great deal of variety for the home cook, showcasing recipes from around the world using the standard varieties of fish found in good fish markets throughout the country. Dividing the book into sections, the author features all the various methods of preparation--poaching and steaming, sautéing and frying, broiling and grilling, and baking and roasting--along with the garnishes, sauces, and salsas that can make fish cookery so interesting. A helpful photo is included for each recipe, along with suggested accompaniments.
   
   Among the most interesting recipes for those looking for something different are: Tandoori Fish, with its marinade of ginger, onion, garlic, a variety of (readily available) Asian spices, and yogurt; Steamed Fish with ginger, green onions, and soy sauce; Broiled Fish in a Greek Marinade of garlic, oregano, thyme, and ouzo; and, my favorite, Italian Fish Stew, with green peppers, onions, garlic, red pepper flakes, fennel, plum tomatoes and white wine. None of these recipes cook for more than 8 - 10 minutes, so if all the preparation is done ahead of time, cooking can be a no-fuss, last-minute activity.
   
   A few of the recipes are not very attractive to look at. Though the Salmon Poached in Red Wine with Caramelized Shallots sounds as if it would be tasty, the purplish red wine sauce that bathes the fish is pretty daunting to look at. Trout with Prosciutto and Sage also sounds tasty, but the fish is served whole--the head, tail, and skin intact--not a pretty sight when wrapped in a blanket of red prosciutto.
   
   No shellfish recipes are included, and those who live in parts of the country such as Florida and Hawaii, where a more exotic variety of fish is readily available, will have to figure out their own substitutions in these recipes. There is no mention of fish such as mahi-mahi or the unusual varieties of snapper so plentiful in these areas. A good cookbook with many interesting recipes, this is a helpful addition to a library which already has a more complete book on fish cookery. Mary Whipple

No comments about Complete Fish & Game Cookbook.

3 comments about Simply Salmon.

1. 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!



2. It goes without saying that this man is a pioneer of his craft, however there are throngs of contemporary chefs who are doing things with food that show that they know their ingredients better than Peterson does- good cooking is a result of knowing your ingredients and knowing them well. Peterson claims that there is little, if any, difference between Wild, farm-raised, and Atlantic salmon. This is preposterous! The difference is oceanic. Perhaps Peterson has never eaten Wild King Alaskan salmon or Copper River Sockeye salmon or anything from the Yukon River, which is a real pity, because one of our lifetime's greatest foodies is missing out on the greatest culinary experience of all time! Save you money and spend it on Peterson's Fish & Shellfish. Even the salmon recipes are better.



3. 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.

5 comments about America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking.

1. Yes, a scholarly book, with illustrations. Yawn. If you seek anything more than research and the occasional black and white illustration, look elsewhere. I'm sure the authors are being "celebrated" within their communities, but the hype is just that; hype. The cover of the book is the only colorful, exciting thing about it.
   
   Not that I was expecting a cookbook, but it does not appeal to a wide range of people, and that is a flaw. The authors therefore come across as if they must be glad to be part of such an "elite" group of people who "get it," while the rest of us are simply ignorant.
   
   Also, this is definitely not for the foodies.



2. This is a fascinating story that uses food to debunk many of the myths about New England that we learned in school. Here you will find the real story behind the English reliance on Indian corn, the origins of chowder, and the ways dishes such as baked beans were used to promote one social group over others. This is history at its best--fun, factual, thoughtful, coherent, and readable.



3. Americans still think particular New England foods and menus, like Thanksgiving dinner, Boston Baked Beans, and boiled Maine lobster, are important parts of our American identity. This highly informative book tells us why these and other New England dishes were important to many generations of Americans, and continue to be part of our American heritage.
   
   With wit and erudition, the authors separate fact from fiction through careful analysis of some hoary traditions. Along the way, they left me chuckling over such food-lore gems as the Adams-Jefferson dispute on when to serve pudding and the controversy concerning the "authentic" way to make Rhode Island Jonny cakes, with one side declaring that the other's was "hick feed."
   
   There's something here for just about everyone interested in American history or the history of food. From a discussion of the economic motivation for setting up those quaint New England fishing villages to the environmental implications of animal husbandry (which the English colonists introduced into New England), we learn to think somewhat differently about New England's past. Along the way, we get a glimpse of American home life as it was lived, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, in New England--the houswife who worries that she's too late bottling her plums and the little boy whose mother's "fire-cake" is such a treat. This book makes you feel like you are in those kithcens. Boiling a hundred oysters to make Oyster Ketchup, helping to butcher a 280-pound hog, these New England cooks were really something!
   
   While it is a history and not a cookbook, this book gives both cooks and history buffs the solid information we need to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of New England food lore. It offers a chance to see what New Englanders ate, and why, and most tellingly, what they thought about their food.



4. Although we know that armies march on their bellies and that the search for food has played a crucial role in building societies, the writing of history has often neglected this important subject. Only recently has food history taken its place alongside more conventional approaches to history-writing. This book is a fine example of the new interest in food history.
   
   What impressed me as I read it was how little I had known before, and how much I was learning about what New Englanders ate throughout the region's history. We've all heard about Boston baked beans and Indian pudding, but I didn't know about the gingerbread that colonial militamen nibbled on muster days. Nor did I know that bear was considered even better eating than venison by the Massachusetts Bay colonists. One nineteenth-century writer asserted that cod fish was to New England what roast beef was to England. What struck me most, however, was how the authors discuss the colonial revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how that period shaped our ideas of "historic" New England. What we think of as New England's historic foods--the "first" Thanksgiving meal, those Boston baked beans--were partly based in fact but were mostly the invention of the colonial revivial.
   
   The ways that people use their traditional foods to represent their culture are described in fascinating detail in America's Founding Food. There's a wealth of detail here, but also a great story about what food meant, from the settlement of New England to the revival of the region as a destination for those interested in America's roots. This is a substantial, thoughtful book.



5. My New England bookshelf groans under the weight of historical studies focusing on the politics, theology, intellectual life, industry, and notable people of the region. These are all worthy if well-worn subjects. Then there's the New England tourism industry, selling "ye olde" Boston baked beans, clam chowder, and Indian pudding as vaunted, almost sacred, symbols of the region. Here, finally, is a book that explains the connection between the two, taking both the history and the food seriously.
   
   There are many surprises here, for instance that turkeys were often boiled and garnished with oyster sauce when served for special feasts, and that the first English to settle the region grew corn because their wheat crops mostly failed. This is a careful, food-oriented story, with lots of detail on what people ate, and how it was processed and preserved as well as cooked. It's also interesting to learn what average families wanted to eat when they were dining on their daily pottage.
   
   The authors use memoirs, letters, and novels as well as cookbooks to uncover what New Englanders thought about the foods they ate. This is a compelling account and a detailed study, with lots of good stories to leaven the Boston Brown Bread. Whether you're interested in the ways gingerbread recipes changed from the court kitchens of the Middle Ages to the farm kitchens of New England, or in the reasons why a wallflower cuisine like New England cooking became enshrined as American food, there's something here for you.

3 comments about Cooking Freshwater Fish.

1. This book's recipes are fabulous, easy to prepare and family friendly as well. The photography and layout are wonderful. When paging through this book you will feel inspired to try every dish. Another aspect of this cookbook that I really like is that most of the ingredients are readily available and even though it has a gormet "feel" to it, the recipes are easily prepared. Although I've always felt I'm a pretty good cook, I've struggled with confidence in the "fish department". Now that I have this book I feel much more assured of a good outcome. I've also adapted some of the recipes to ocean fish and they work great.
   In-fisherman and chef watson did a great job with this!



2. I have long been a fan of Lucia Watson's. This cook book has it all.



3. This is one of the best cookbooks I have found on the subject. The author is a Cordon Blue Chef who operates her own restuarant in South Minneapolis. She is also an avid outdoors woman who regularly submits recipes for the In-Fisherman magazine and has been featured on the In-Fisherman televison series many times.
   
   The recipes are simple to prepare and easy to follow. An excellent addtion to anyone's library of books dealing with the outdoors.

No comments about The Loaves and Fishes Party Cookbook.