Fish cookbook that has photographs and Asian fish?

May 10, 2014 4:56 AM

We want to be great at fish and seafood dishes. The last question was on UK cookbooks, and the US fish books don't match the fish we have available in Singapore - pomfret and snakehead for example. I'd prefer a cookbook with lots of photographs that focuses on skills rather than specific recipes. An iPad app would be fine too.
posted by viggorlijah to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

Best answer: Sounds like the Sydney Seafood School Cookbook could be what you want. And please take a look at the WWF's sustainable fish guide before you shop! The pomfret is endangered due to overfishing.
posted by travelwithcats at 5:43 AM on May 10, 2014

Fish, the Basics: An Illustrated Guide to Selecting and Cooking Fresh Seafood by Shirley King is a good one. Yes, it is a U.S. author, but once you research and know some basic facts about the fish you have available in Singapore I think it might be helpful - i.e. which fish you have that are oily or strongly flavored versus mild and sweet (think sole; snakehead is also mild I think) - you can then adapt/substitute with recipes.

Also, since snakeheads are now in the U.S., you will see some recipes here for them. For example, the right sidebar on this site has a video on how to fillet them, and several recipes.
posted by gudrun at 10:44 AM on May 10, 2014

Response by poster: I ended up buying Fish Market based on reviews and it came this week. It's not what I wanted entirely either, but the range of the recipes and notes about the fish (what to swap for what, ecological notes etc) is sufficient and it's a pleasant smallish book. I didn't want to lug a giant encyclopedia with me to the supermarket where I have access to only a fraction of the fish species, and with this, I can cook about 80% of the recipes as an introduction to more fish in our diet.

Travelwithcats, I've got that as a printout tucked into the cookbook for reference, thank you so much!
posted by viggorlijah at 2:01 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]