The Whole Fish Cookbook: New ways to cook, eat and think

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In The Whole Fish Cookbook, groundbreaking seafood chef Josh Niland reveals a completely new way to think about all aspects of fish cookery. From sourcing and butchering to dry ageing and curing, it challenges everything we thought we knew about the subject and invites readers to see fish for what it really is - an amazing, complex source of protein that can and should be treated with exactly the same nose-to-tail reverence as meat.

So if you’re new to cooking this type of meat, it’s best to get a fish cookbook. More than just a collection of recipes, the best ones give you tips on every aspect of cooking fish. They’ll show you where to buy fish, how to choose, what to do with it, and even, how to plate it. The intoxicating aroma of red mullet cooking over a charcoal grill is enough to get anyone excited about this fish. I always refer to red mullet as poor man’s lobster due to its distinct shellfish-like flavor, but this is a delicious dish that is rich, full of umami and sweetness from the corn as well as the skin of the fish. The book is divided into three sections: Fishing, Cleaning and Filleting, and Recipes. The first section shows you how responsibly harvest freshwater fish all throughout the year. The second is a more intensive look at how to clean and process the fish. It includes step-by-step color photos for scaling, gutting, filleting, and storing fish. The book offers quite a range of dishes that are not too complicated and are great for everyday cooking. It also has lots of variations for every fish and dish. This is not a gourmet cookbook, however, so some culinary snobs might find the recipes too pedestrian but the recipes are delicious and fool-proof. Sometimes, that’s all one needs for a great fish dish. Related Content

Eager to try a lighter, fishier twist on one of my childhood favourites, I whipped up a batch of Niland’s fish sausage rolls. The filling was made from trout, scallops and white fish whizzed in a food processor, then combined with grated onion, chopped parsley, white pepper, salt, fennel seeds and nutmeg. This filling was wrapped in puff pastry and generously egg-washed before baking. Served hot or eaten cold the next day, not only were they delicious and easy, but a great way of using up smaller scraps of fish. This is an old book (it was published in 1986) but readers loved how the recipes have withstood the test of time. For those looking for a classic, this book is a must-have. Finding some of the ingredients in this book could be difficult unless you live in Australia or elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, getting all of the varieties of fish specified in some of the recipes will be impossible. However, Josh provides plenty of alternatives but you will definitely need an excellent fishmonger if you are going to cook from the book, supermarket quality fish just isn’t going to cut it.

The recipes are inspired by regional and traditional cuisines. Instead of photos, beautiful illustrations accompany these recipes. There’s a section on culinary techniques and another one covering flavored butters, sauces, and spice mixes to complement the featured dishes. Scale a smaller fish that has smaller scales, such as whiting, bream, red mullet or flathead. Place the scales in a small saucepan of cold water to cover and bring to the boil. Repeat this process 5 times, each time with new cold water. This will not only clean the scales but make them slightly more tender in the final product. There is so much more to a fish than just the fillet, and it is indeed true what they say about there being more than just a handful of fish in the sea. This cookbook features classic fish cuisine recipes and modern ones. There are more than 300 recipes in this book, most of which can be done in an hour while the rest can be made in 30 minutes. The best ones feature a wealth of information and trivia alongside the recipes so they make good coffee table reading. This include highlighting the nutritional info for each featured fish.Throughout this book, you'll find a lot of texts besides the recipes including a foreword from Australian food writer Pat Nourse, and articles covering topics such as the reasons why we don’t currently cook more fish at home, sourcing fish, storing and dry-aging fish, fish butchery and treating fish in the same way as meat, curing fish, using fish offal and ‘fishues’ i.e. issues with fish. Readers liked this book because it presents a lot of alternatives to breading and frying freshwater fish. It is also a nice introduction to learning about the subtle flavors of white-fleshed inland fish. We all want to eat more fish, but who wants to bother spending the time, effort and money cooking that same old salmon fillet on repeat when you could be trying something new and utterly delicious?

Josh has basically taken all the old ways of fish prep and cookery and thrown the bad ones out the window then turned what remains on its head. This book is such an eye opener for me personally and at the same time makes so much sense when Josh explains how he thinks about the world of seafood. This a good game fish cookbook that should be a must-read for anyone new to game fishing or even experienced game fishermen. Equal parts comprehensive technical manual and a giant porthole into creativity, chef Niland's honest and pure approach to all things fish is inspiring.The Whole Fish Cookbook beautifully articulates the entire animal approach while methodically opening the reader's mind to how responsibility and innovation coexist. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Whole_Fish_Cookbook_-_osh_Nil.pdf, The_Whole_Fish_Cookbook_-_osh_Nil.epubIn general, readers found the book informative for its content on the seafood of the Northwest. One reader, however, said the recipes-while delicious- are more geared towards a culinary artist than a home cook. Come for the recipes, but stay for the gorgeous photos and the intensive info on sustainable fishing. Excerpted from The Whole Fish Cookbook: New Ways to Cook, Eat and Think (C) 2019 by Josh Niland. Reproduced by permission of Hardie Grant Books. All rights reserved. This is a cookbook for the professional fish cook. It features more than 250 recipes and includes a section on the culinary techniques for preparing fish and shellfish. When the oil has reached a light haze and is 185°C (365°F), carefully add the scales and deep-fry for about 5 seconds, until crisp but without too much colour. Using a sieve, drain and set on paper towel to dry out. Season liberally with fine salt and set aside in a dry place ready for serving. You can add other flavours here too, such as ground fennel, togarashi, ground seaweed, etc.

This cookbook specializes in preparing freshwater game fish and features 50 modern recipes for dishes and accompanying sides. Readers loved the section on sauces as it offers a lot of variety and flavor. The sauces can also be used for just about anything. However, there were some comments on how the book does not include the total prep and cook times for the recipes.

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Keep the heat high, add the vegetables (15 per cent), such as shallots, garlic and celery and coat well with all the fish fat and caramelized scratchings from the base of the pan. Add any hard herbs and toasted aromatics, such as fennel seed, star anise or coriander. More textbook than a recipe collection, this book will appeal to professional chefs looking for creative techniques in fish butchering. There’s great information in cleaning fish and utilizing parts of the fish not commonly used for eating, like innards, fish bones, and scales. There’s also a section that shows you how to dry or age the fish prior to using it in a dish. Josh suggests an entire new way of thinking about how we process fish with far more consideration given to elements that would traditionally be considered ‘waste’. Understanding the different parts of a fish and the methods of fish cookery lead to treating this complex source of protein with the same nose-to-tail reverence as meat. Readers liked it for its extensive content although one said its recipe selection could be repetitive at times. If you’re looking for an encyclopedic approach to cooking seafood, this is the book for you. From the editors of the American Test Kitchen, this book features 198 delicious recipes that have been kitchen-tested and will work with different kinds of fish. There’s enough information to educate the reader on the basics of selecting quality fish in stores and how to handle and prepare them.