All things fish
My picks of the best fish focused cookbooks and October's theme for The Kitchen Bookshelf cookbook club
Regular readers will know I’m just back from a two week holiday in southern Spain where I got to enjoy plenty of fish courtesy of the local town’s brilliant fishmonger, Maria. (If you ever head to Gaucin in Malaga, seek her out on a Tuesday or Friday, 8am-noon.)
Maria was too awe-inducing, and my Spanish too lacking, for me to ask her to do much fish prep. Which meant I had to get a little more hands-on than I would back home. No bad thing. That - plus free-wheeling how I cooked it all - means I have spent quite a lot of the last fortnight contemplating all things fish. Those thoughts include: If I’d been at home, which of my cookbooks would I have been grabbing to give me a skills helping hand / recipe inspiration.
Making our cookbook club theme for October: Fish themed cookbooks
I’m thinking specifically about ones that are front and centre focussed on fish: skills based or recipe based or both. There are, of course, oceans (sorry) of broader themed cookbooks with terrific fish recipes within them. But I think there is a very special role to be played by the books that really hone in on fish and seafood.
That role is in part as a response to two things I feel like I hear a lot: 1) That homecooks feel less confident when it comes to cooking / prepping fish than with other things; and 2) that we should be eating more fish. Fish-focussed cookbooks can go a long way to fixing both those things.
These books also can play an important role in helping us think about our relationship with, and the value of, the fishing industry. They can throw a light on sustainability; on the people involved from catching it to cooking it; on how the industry has changed and will still; and simply on how we can make the most of our fish stocks.
As I’ve been looking at my shelves and scouring those online I’m struck by the dearth of cookbooks that celebrate the fish cookery of a more diverse culinary world than this list is showing. Again, I don’t really mean broader cookbooks that include good fish recipes - there are plenty of those. Andi Oliver’s The Pepperpot Diaries, Ravinder Bhopal’s Jikoni, Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice, and anything by Jose Pizarro come to mind immediately as ones with wonderful fish recipes. Plenty of others too. No, what I mean are fish-focussed books. If you know of some good ones, please please send them my way.
In the meantime, below are some of my fish themed cookbook choices (in no particular order). They’re the books I might have grabbed over the last 2 weeks if only they’d been to hand!
Angela x
Please do feel free to join in the discussion in the comments here:
Or join in with the virtual discussion on Thursday 13th October, 6.30pm
Rick Stein: English Seafood Cookery (1988) / Taste of the Sea (1995) / (and, well, so many more)
It would probably be against some kind of fishy law for me to not include, let alone start with, Rick Stein. Fish and seafood cooking are what he remains synonymous with no matter how forays he makes away from the shores (as with his latest book, Rick Stein’s Food Stories, that has just been released).
By my wikipedia-reckoning Rick Stein is on 29 books and counting. His first book, English Seafood Cookery, sets the bar phenomenally high for any fish cookbook, not just his. It is a Penguin paperback and if you have those editions of Jane Grigson’s Fish Book or Vegetable Book on your shelves then you’ll know what to expect. There are no pictures - just line drawings. Even the cover is totally Grigson-esque. And it is packed to the gills (again, sorry) with everything the fish-curious cook might want to know: an A-Z of fish types and what to look for when buying them; info on storing, prepping, filleting, skinning…; basics on the different styles of cooking; and - I absolutely love this - a guide to the herbs and veg to use when cooking fish. That’s all before any actual recipes. It is a treasure trove of fish-related know-how. (We’ll be talking plenty more about this book at this month’s virtual discussion.)
His slightly later Taste of The Sea was my first fish book - of all, not just of Stein’s. I can’t reminder how but I came across it as I was easing myself into cooking ‘properly’ but it became the one I would go back to and back to. A great book for basic skills and simple recipes. I annoyingly can’t find it on my shelves right now which makes me think I am either a) just not looking hard enough; b) have lent it / lost it; or c) got a bit cocky at some point and thought I’d moved on from it. That last option would have been silly - it’s always good to have a good basics book. Here’s hoping for option a) and that it turns up.
The Seafood Shack - Food & Tales From Ullapool by Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick (2020)
You know those cookbooks that make you smile just picking them up? This is one of those. From the endpapers with shots of families clearly having a brilliant time at the actual Seafood Shack that Kirsty and Fenella run, to its recipes running the gamut from everyday food-on-table family style to fancier dinners.
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