Fish on a First-Name Basis

For the second time, I have checked this book out of the library: Fish on a First-Name Basis: How Fish Is Caught, Bought, Cleaned, Cooked, and Eaten. Actually, the only reason I didn't buy it after the first time I borrowed it from the library is that I forgot to add it to my Amazon order, and Amazon doesn't let you add free super saver items after you confirm an order. Doh.

This is one of the best books about seafood. Ever. I always scour the seafood shelves (usually only part of a shelf) in bookstores for good fish books and rarely find them. Everything about this book is great: the wealth of information about a wide array of seafood including but not limited to: salmon, yellowfin tuna, dungeness crab (Rob Deborde prefers Dungeness over blue crab, but this is probably my only complaint!), clams, oysters, mussels, patagonian toothfish... If you don't know what patagonian toothfish is, obviously you need to get this book.

Oh sorry, I got off track. More things that I love about this book: the information (and it's not just about cooking but also nutrition info, how the different types grow or how to tell them apart), the cute writing style, the totally adorable illustrations! I have to admit that I don't look too hard at the recipes, but they all sound good.

So, really, this is a great book about seafood, which I highly recommend for everyone except two of my friends, E and J (I like to call him Dr. J), because they don't like seafood even though this book is all about where seafood comes from and how it's grown/harvested and stuff and not just recipes!!!

Okay, and when I said earlier about it being hard to find good seafood books, I do have one book dedicated only to blue crab recipes called The Crabbiest Cookbook and that book is totally awesome, too.