(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best fish & seafood cooking books

If I had to get a cook book by any chef (excluding Julia Child) I think I would get this one. It has really great food in it and it isn't just one style. My friends always cook from it and my wife and I are always amazed at the results.

The book "The Story of Sushi" by Trevor Corson is full of fascinating, detailed yet accessible explanations on the science of fish muscles, how they work, why they taste good, etc. If you find OP's question interesting you might like the book.

> And I said most people in the US haven't eaten Buffalo.

Maybe not most, but there's a buffalo farm not 10 miles from here. They sell lean buffalo at the food co-op and at the farmer's markets.

Anyway, I have a cookbook you might like: Native Indian Wild Game, Fish, and Wild Foods Cookbook Used ones are cheap online. There's a couple different types of recipes in this book; exotic meats like porcupine, racoon, muskrat, groundhog, snapping turtle, etc. But there's a whole lot of recipes that if you saw them on a menu, your first thought would not be Native American cuisine: poached trout, pickeral soup, blackberry muffins, pumpkin soup, fish chowder, squash soup, shrimp and okra stew, cornbread, etc. They typically do not have much spice and tend to be bland. I look askance at one's that call for something non-traditional like oregano.

I sold dozens of those a night. My chef du cuisine adapted the recipe from an Alan Wong recipe found in this great Hawaiian cookbook. You can make the recipe with pretty much any fish fillet that's 3/4" thick. Fresh Alaskan king can now run over $20/lb...

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I've used Rick Stein's court bouillon recipe for poaching skate and I would highly recommend it- bonus is you can use the liquid as the base for a stew after you've poached fish in it.

I've found his book English Seafood Cookery helped me a great deal when trying to work out what the hell to do with fish.

Looks like I'm late to the party, but please check out my friend's book. She basically went all over New England eating lobster rolls and wrote a book about it!

http://www.amazon.com/Lobster-Rolls-New-England-American/dp/1626194084/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418430300&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000MR8TH2?pc_redir=1397679399&robot_redir=1

This isn't a primary source but a scholarly novel that is heavily cited. I'm not sure if it helps at all.

Aquaculture actually contributes an obscene amount of pollution to the ocean and is pretty harmful to aquatic ecosystems. I don't think it's the answer, I think the answer is just eating less from the top of the food chain and focusing on sustainable fishing. It means less consumption, but I don't think trading the existence of a healthy ocean for cheap salmon at Walmart is an unreasonable request. Bottomfeeder is a great book for more detailed accounts of the horrors of aquaculture and how sustainable seafood is actually not that difficult.

I recommend this book on the subject (one chapter on bluefin tuna, very interesting look at fishery depletion) - http://www.amazon.com/Bottomfeeder-Ethically-World-Vanishing-Seafood/dp/1596916257/

Hired as a....? Bartender?

The Connosseur's Gudie to Sushi is actually pretty comprehensive about types of fish, styles of sushi (nigiri, maki, chirashi) and origins, etc. If you can get past the condescending tone of the author.

Other than that, there's not a lot of good readable guides to all of sushi.

Also!

The Fishmonger's Apprentice by Aliza Green

Forgot I had this book as well (I don't cook seafood as often as I should)

It's quite comprehensive in the way of preparation. I think this is more what you are looking for

If you liked that story you might want to check out The Zen of Fish it follows a class of sushi chefs in training at a school in California.

You should read Bottom Feeder by Taras Grescoe, it's quite interesting, if a little preachy.

In Sea and Smoke Wetzel has a recipe using sous vide for a Spot Prawn stock using blitzed prawn tails and shells ($$$ yikes!), and alludes to poaching some of the tails in butter at 158 on the stove, which they almost certainly do sous vide. Spot prawns are delicious but our recreational limit here is 60 per day, two days a year. Not sure I'd blender any of the tails just for stock...

My girlfriend is an Oyster fiend. I bought Rowan Jacbonsen's The Essential Oyster after hearing him on Gastropod.

Some oyster thoughts: Dave Chang gave me the idea of a kimchi mignonette. It's perfect.

Idk why we don't talk about wine here more. But oysters + Muscadet = heaven.

I was thoroughly unimpressed by gulf oysters (sorry /u/albino-rhino). Could've been the season I was there (January) but I found them kind of flabby and flavorless.

They're probably getting fish by-product meal and/or flax seeds.

Salmon is one of those fish that suffers from over-fishing and was traditionally only a seasonal food. But at present, fish farms have a lot in common with CAFOs; see Bottomfeeder.

Side note and maybe this is just me, but texture of farmed salmon is totally different too - it's like jello interlaced with fish fat.

Wild fish: Some fishing stocks are in danger of overfishing, others aren't. For example, the wild Pacific salmon population is OK but Atlantic is overfished to the verge of collapse.
Aquaculture: Yes, our practices are often better. Standard practice in some places pumps the seafood full of unnecessary antibiotics, contaminating the water, your food, and endangering the health of the workers on the fish farms.
For more about all this you should check out a book called Bottomfeeder, by Taras Grescoe. It's shocking; probably the most important book I've read in the last 10 years.
http://www.amazon.com/Bottomfeeder-Ethically-World-Vanishing-Seafood/dp/1596912251

I ate a taco stuffed with kalbi at Alan Wong's in Honolulu in maybe 2002. The recipe is in this cookbook published in 1999.

Couple of my favs are:

Good Fish

Jerusalem

not a big thing, but it is a thing. i think it actually makes more sense than being a vegetarian, cruelty-wise.

https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Oysters-Connoisseurs-Oyster-America/dp/159691548X/ref=nodl_ this is a good one

http://www.amazon.com/Fish-Friday-Feasting-Fasting-Discovery/dp/B000MR8TH2