Fish

I think tomatoes and summer squash always taste great together. The key to this two-vegetable simple spin on ratatouille is roasting the tomatoes first. It intensifies their sweetness and makes the whole dish rich in flavor.

Here I combine woody herbs with the potatoes and tender herbs with the fish. The result is an intensely flavorful and fragrant dish.

Super-savory green olives form the base of an amazing vinaigrette that brings out the sweetness of snapper and late-summer corn and potatoes.

Barbecue sauce, especially a spicy one, may seem an unusual pairing for fish, but the richness of salmon not only stands up to the heat, it actually is enhanced by the flavor of the sauce.

This broth is so good I could drink it by the bowlful. Be sure to serve this with steamed sticky rice. Even better: When I have leftover sticky rice, I press it into small cubes and fry them until crisp and golden brown. You can find konbu, bonito, miso, and yuzu at a Japanese grocery or a well-stocked Asian market.

Any fish on the bone works here—whole red snapper or salmon steaks would also be good choices—but I especially love just-caught sea bass. Set on a bed of fennel and smothered with tart-sweet Meyer lemons and cherry tomatoes, the fish absorbs all those flavors while it steam-roasts in dry white wine. I love the distinctive citrus aroma of Meyer lemons, but you can use regular lemons here, too.

When I lived near Nice in the sunny south of France, I discovered that everyone there has a version of this summer salad. By tasting ones made by everyone from legendary chefs to humble housewives, I came up with my own. My sun-dried tomato vinaigrette makes this version distinctive. The perfumed sweetness of elderflower cordial highlights the concentrated sweetness of the tomatoes. Be sure to use the best sushi-grade bluefin or yellowfin tuna you can find.

This simple starter always brings me back to Provence, where I trained as a young chef. There, we served this sea-salty dip with scallions and red bell peppers, but now fennel is my favorite. This dip is so good, it works with any combination of vegetables; pick from my suggestions below. And if you think you don’t like anchovies, you have to try this. The milk mellows the intensity of the fish and the garlic and makes the dip incredibly creamy.

Pissaladière is a specialty of the southern French town of Nice. Named for pissalat (“salted fish”), this tart always includes anchovies, either whole or puréed, which are spread over the dough before baking.

This is our play on classic poached salmon. It’s almost a croquette, and is perfect served with Lemon Cream Sauce (page 64) or with Classic Tomato Sauce (page 56) over spaghetti. If you prefer, try swapping freshly chopped dill for the tarragon, as it’s also a natural partner with the salmon.

The aromatic flavors of a rich fish stew all rolled up in a ball—how’d we do it? A generous splash of Pernod, along with a pinch of fragrant saffron, transports you straight to the Mediterranean coast. We use a firm white fish like tilapia, but feel free to substitute any similarly textured fish. Serve these alongside any of the risottos offered in Chapter 3 (see pages 74 to 77).

Subtle, calming, and healthful, this clear soup is a home remedy for alleviating stress. The ginger subdues nausea, aids digestion, and stimulates circulation; the fish balls provide protein to relieve hunger; and the mushrooms and spinach enliven the broth to make the remedy more than palatable, indeed desirable. How simple. How soothing. The spinach roots add an elusive textural dimension to the broth. Not exactly crunchable, they are nonetheless more chewable than spinach leaves. They are available at the bottom of ordinary bunch spinach sold with roots attached. Cut them off to use in the soup and save the leaves for another dish.

The Yiddish word gefilte means “filled” or “stuffed,” and originally gefilte fish was fish skins stuffed with a white fish mousse, similar to a French quenelle. Eventually the fish skins were eliminated and just the stuffing was kept, more user-friendly for the home cook, and the skins, if there were any, became part of the broth. Once freed from being stuffed into something, the filling was shaped into oval dumplings and poached without benefit of wrapping. What is important for authenticity, and for the best flavor, is to brew your own fish broth with white fish bones (not salmon or shrimp), which is ready in only 30 minutes. Why take the trouble at all? Well, some dishes are revered for their status as iconic ritual that affirms and carries forth the culture, and making them from scratch both reinforces that role and binds the community of which they are part. Out-of-the-jar gefilte fish just isn’t the same. It is a must-have dish on the Seder table, and beyond that, it is delicious for any occasion that calls for a light first course. Gefilte fish is traditionally made with freshwater fish, but if none is available, any saltwater fish with firm, white flesh will do. Horseradish root is part of the Seder plate of symbolic foods that signify various stages of the Jews’ flight from Egypt. Finely grated, and sometimes colored a fiery red with the addition of shredded beets, the horseradish condiment is both the customary and perfect accompaniment to gefilte fish.

Before the era of widespread refrigeration, most of the commercial salmon catch was smoked or canned so it could be stored until the next season. And there was plenty to can in those days, because the salmon population was not threatened by overfishing or pollution of their habitat. As a result, canned salmon became a fixture on grocery store shelves and in home pantries across the United States, and the salmon croquette became a specialty of American cooking. I recall my mother opening a can of salmon for a quick dinner, mixing it with egg, bread crumbs, and some seasonings, patting the mixture into cakes, and sautéing them until golden on both sides. These days, it is not difficult to procure fresh salmon, and that is what I prefer for my croquettes, though always shopping with sustainability of the fish in mind. The price difference between canned and fresh is unexpectedly small, and it takes but a few minutes to cook salmon steaks or fillets—in the oven or in the microwave—for the croquettes. The payoff is, as is generally true, the taste difference: fresh is the best. The croquettes make a pretty focus for a brunch or light dinner menu, as here, or serve them as an unusual side dish for breakfast with eggs cooked any style.

Cod, as food historian Mark Kurlansky convincingly purports in his fascinating exegesis on its commercial history, is “the fish that changed the world.” Evidence exists that commerce in cod was founded in the tenth century by seafaring Vikings who, seeking new fishing grounds when their homeland supply was depleted for the season, came upon Newfoundland and its cod bounty, establishing a trade route between the Old World and what was called the New World. In time, cod commerce gave rise to emigration and engendered settlements, eventually towns, along the northern Atlantic seaboard. Naturally, the first settlers in that harsh environment created food based on what was available: cod. Although much of it was preserved with salt to use at home and to ship across the Atlantic to the waiting market there, some was used fresh, especially in chowder. In this version, the cod is fashioned into a sausagelike mixture and formed into balls, which are joined in the soup pot by another popular local catch, shrimp. Northeast fishermen harvest the pink, intensely flavored Northern shrimp, also known as Maine shrimp, which are available only from winter through early spring. But almost any medium shrimp can substitute, as long as they are from North American waters.

The tickle factor in this dish comes from the wasabi—Japanese horseradish. You can find it in the Asian section of your supermarket. And since we’re cookin’ in an Asian mode, we like the tuna served nice and rare, almost like sushi.

We think this is one fine fancy-pants dish. The sweet potato crust not only seals in the succulence of the fish but also gives it a crunchy, caramelized coating. The sauce of roasted red peppers simmered with lots of aromatics makes for a sexy finish.

We don’t do much poachin’ at the restaurant, but at home it’s another story. This is how I like to fix salmon. It has a light, almost brothy BBQ sauce flavored with a bit of dill.

This dish was created for a local fiery food show. It happened to be Lent at the time, so we figured fish would be a good seasonal choice. Then someone reminded us that the bacon was an unholy partner. With apologies to the Pope, we served it anyway because it was that sinfully good.

I never liked swordfish much til I had it sliced thin and flash-grilled. This keeps the flesh moist and succulent. You’ll need to ask your fish seller for a piece of the swordfish loin so you can slice it yourself or have him do it for you. The difference in eating pleasure is worth the effort.