Foolproof Fish: Modern Recipes for Everyone, Everywhere

“Fish shouldn’t be scary,” the team at America’s Test Kitchen writes in the introduction to this wildly useful guide to cooking fish and shellfish. They make good on the promise to demystify cooking seafood, serving up 198 easily sourced and prepared recipes, offering advice on techniques such as breaking down a lobster or prepping salmon, and dispensing tips on buying seafood (“fish should smell sweet like the sea”). The book opens with recipes for such basics as crunchy oven fish fillets, fried catfish, and pan-seared scallops, before branching out into chapters on meals (lemon-herb roasted cod with crispy garlic potatoes; Tuscan shrimp and beans), soups (cioppino; Thai hot and sour soup with shrimp and rice vermicelli), and salads (fennel and apple salad with smoked mackerel). Each recipe begins with tips before starting, such as grinding shrimp shells with broth to amp up the flavor of shrimp bisque, and using a combination of coarse and finely ground cornmeal for the best crust on fried catfish. The book’s depth, breadth, and practicality makes it a must-have for seafood lovers. (May)