English Seafood Cookery (Cookery Library) [Paperback]

'Fish is becoming increasingly popular with the British who are learning to appreciate its enormous variety, versatility and its value as an essential part of a healthy diet.
Drawing on culinary traditions from around the world,
Rick Stein presents the special recipes he serves at his Seafood Restaurant, in Padstow, and, by sharing the secrets of his most popular dishes, encourages us to cook seafood in new and exciting ways.'

Penguin Cookery Library format - paperback with 288 pages, split over chapters:-

An A-to-Z of fish and how to buy them
Preparing fish
Cooking fish
Herbs and vegetables for fish cookery
Basic preparations : stocks, sauces, butters, dressings, batters, pastry and salting
For serving with aperitifs
Soups
Hors d'oeuvres and salads
Fish dishes for a first course
Shellfish dishes for a first course
Everyday main courses
Special main course fish dishes
Vegetable recipes

sandwiched between and introduction and a concise index and interspersed with charming black and white illustrations.

'Much as I am aware of the difficulties of cooking anything complicated and time-consuming these days, because of the extraordinarily frenetic lives we lead (me included), let me advise you to calm down!
In my opinion, good cookery owes far less to skill than many of my customers realise, and far more to good ingredients and good planning; and you cannot plan well unless you sit down and think.

Most of the recipes in this book will not work well if you are hurriedly cobbling them together after work or in between bathing the children and dashing out to get the babysitter. You wouldn't expect a plumber to install your central heating like that, and it is not the right way to produce something delightful to eat.

Many people tell me they dislike cooking, and I believe it is because they don't give themselves enough time to enjoy it. There are plenty of recipes in this book which you can produce and cook very quickly but very few that don't need pre-panning. You will see that any recipe which needs some serious planning contains an `Order of Work' which will help you to organise a difficult dish.'

Recipes include:-

Scallops with Bacon
Anchovy Ice Cream in Puff Pastry
Mackerel with Tarragon
Shellfish Bisque
Hot Kipper Salad with Whisky
Fried Squid with an Ink Sauce
Stuffed Cockles
Mussels with Tomato and Basil
A Rather Special Fish Pie
Skate with Black Butter
Retsina Fish Stew
Roast Sea Bass with a Sorrel Sauce
Grilled Lobsters with Hot Herb Butter
Grilled Red Mullet with Mediterranean Flavours
Salmon in Puff Pastry with Champagne Sauce
French Beans with Lemon Sauce
Potato Daube

Not constrained by the need for lots of glossy photos as required by TV tie-ins this is perhaps his best book. Nicely illustrated and full of deeply practical advice .

The recipes have not dated at all and are a joy to cook. I have had the book 10 years and together with Jane Grigson it is my first port of call in fish cookery

An excellent book. A real favourite in the top class, along with Jane Grigson and George Lassalle. The salmon in pastry, for example, is simple, elegant and completely scrumptious, even if I don't use champagne for the champagne sauce.