Foolproof Fish

Starred review from April 20, 2020
“Fish shouldn’t be scary,” the team at America’s Test Kitchen writes in the introduction to this wildly useful guide to cooking fish and shellfish. They make good on the promise to demystify cooking seafood, serving up 198 easily sourced and prepared recipes, offering advice on techniques such as breaking down a lobster or prepping salmon, and dispensing tips on buying seafood (“fish should smell sweet like the sea”). The book opens with recipes for such basics as crunchy oven fish fillets, fried catfish, and pan-seared scallops, before branching out into chapters on meals (lemon-herb roasted cod with crispy garlic potatoes; Tuscan shrimp and beans), soups (cioppino; Thai hot and sour soup with shrimp and rice vermicelli), and salads (fennel and apple salad with smoked mackerel). Each recipe begins with tips before starting, such as grinding shrimp shells with broth to amp up the flavor of shrimp bisque, and using a combination of coarse and finely ground cornmeal for the best crust on fried catfish. The book’s depth, breadth, and practicality makes it a must-have for seafood lovers.

Starred review from May 1, 2020
Novice fish cooks will discover here just about everything they need to take advantage of the bounty of the world's oceans, lakes, and rivers. Health experts tout the benefits of seafood in a family's diet, and advances in sustainable fishing from both wild and farm stocks make seafood more available nationwide. Through the use of tables the book lays out the many different fish likely to be found in markets, the culinary properties of each, and a guide to substituting one variety for another. Color photographs show fish in close-up and lay out the steps in skinning and other preparation as well as highlighting finished dishes. Besides finfish, the book incorporates bivalves and cephalopods, expanding a cook's repertoire. Because market fish selection can vary, each recipe helpfully notes what other fish will work equally well. Although American preparations predominate, Mexican, Italian, French, and Asian approaches are well represented. Recipes have the authoritative tone of America's Test Kitchen cooks, and introductory paragraphs lay out the rationale behind every technique.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2020

As in their numerous other titles, America's Test Kitchen returns to make techniques and recipes accessible and effortless for any cook. Beginning with a buying guide as well as a classification table of types of fish and appropriate substitutions to use in a recipe, this book moves on to various techniques--roasting, broiling, braising, baking, pan-searing, steaming, poaching, frying, and grilling--on how to prepare the ideal seafood dish. Education guides on shopping for seafood are a bonus. Chapters are divided by type of fish and seafood, with cod, salmon, and shrimp, given considerable attention. Recipes such as lemon-basil cod cakes and sesame-crusted salmon will tempt readers, and the vivid illustrations will walk home cooks through each step. VERDICT With this book, anyone will find this a delightful guide to preparing fish and seafood, no matter their expertise.--Ginny Wolter, Toledo Lucas Cty. P.L.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.