Over the years, New York Times cookbooks have won fans for their wide and winning recipe range. The New York Times Seafood Cookbook, edited by New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant, upholds the tradition, offering more than 250 recipes for nearly 100 kinds of fish and shellfish, presented alphabetically, from anchovies and barnacles to squid and yellowtail tuna. Additional chapters treat caviar and smoked fish and mixed seafood dishes, such as bouillabaisse, gumbos, and noodle preparations. The recipes come from contributors including chefs Mario Batali, Tom Colicchio, Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, and Fabricant herself.

From a vast recipe selection, dishes like Malaysian-Style Ginger Crab with Chile Sauce, Saucy Scallops with Spicy Bacon Corn Relish, and Roasted Cod with Niçoise Vinaigrette typify the "modern" dishes, while Corn and Lobster Chowder, Southern Fried Catfish and Hushpuppies, and a particularly nice seafood paella, exemplify more traditional fare. This is food that works for many occasions and that most readers can prepare pleasurably. Particularly useful, however, is the book's introductory material, which presents a wide range of topics--on today's expanded seafood market, environmental concerns, and acquaculture, among them--in concise, up-to-the-minute form. The usual rules concerning shopping, portion size, cooking techniques and the like are here too, but receive particularly sensible attention. (The wise shopper, says Fabricant, knows how to substitute one species for another when the market lacks a planned-on choice, finding substitutes that behave similarly in the pan to unavailable types.) The book's alphabetical organization (each entry also features a species "profile") allows readers to find specific information without hunting. Illustrated with color photos, the book offers truly useful information as well as that wide recipe range, as welcome now as ever. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
As Fabricant, a longtime writer for the dining section of the New York Times, notes in her introduction, the way Americans buy, cook and eat seafood has changed drastically over the last 50 or so years. Indeed, the recipes in this collection make use of a wide range of fish types and suggest numerous useful preparation methods. It's a shame, though, that the recipes have not been dated, as that might have made the book more useful in terms of culinary history. The recipes themselves, however, are streamlined and reliable. Within each chapter (fish, shellfish, caviar and smoked fish and mixed seafood preparations), recipes are grouped by the type of fish they feature, which are arranged in alphabetical order, so that the largest chapter, the one on fin fish, begins with anchovies (including a recipe for Puntarelle with Anchovies) and ends with yellowtail (Grilled Yellowtail with Mexican Marinade). Most fish types are introduced with an overview of the various types and possible substitutes, as in the explanation of flounder nomenclature. Some of the recipes come from famous-name chefs, such as a Croque-Monsieur with Salmon and Caviar from Eric Ripert of New York's fish temple Le Bernardin, and a Bean and Calamari Soup from Cesare Casella of the Tuscan restaurant Beppe. Other recipes, such as Alaskan Halibut and Salmon Gefilte Fish Terrine, illustrate a melting-pot cuisine particular to New York. A solid introduction provides tips for purchasing seafood and judging doneness and makes this generally excellent volume even more useful.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.