Fish

Cooter, our chef in Rochester, concocted this tongue-tinglin’ booster sauce. Its flavor dances all around in your mouth with every tender bite of the sweetly smoked salmon.

Shellfish lovers drool over the drunken-sweet richness of the sea infusing every inch of this dish. You can use clams, shrimp, and scallops as we do or substitute your own favorites—mussels, oysters, or even some firm-fleshed fish. Just be sure to serve the pan roast with a spoon and plenty of good bread to sop up all the tasty sauce.

We give catfish a good soaking in seasoned buttermilk before we coat and fry it. It tenderizes and sweetens up the fish, which we serve with our favorite spicy tartar sauce. You’ll find it on our appetizer menu every day and in a sandwich on Fridays.

Cooking fish is not one of my specialties, but I do love this recipe because it doesn’t taste fishy. I think it was probably my mom’s attempt to get us girls to eat some fish by disguising it in fried bread crumbs. What can I say? It worked. The creamed peas give the croquettes a slightly sweet accent. This topping tastes good on other meats too, like baked chicken and ham.

This recipe is a nice alternative to fried fish, and the spices give the fish plenty of flavor. You can substitute any mild fish for the roughy.

Growing up, I was lucky to have a catfish pond just down the hill on our farm. My daddy had created the pond from a natural spring when I was a little girl and stocked it with catfish and bream. We had many a wonderful fish fry with freshly caught catfish from our pond all through my childhood. Fresh fried fish served with Mama’s Cornmeal Hushpuppies (page 140)—you couldn’t ask for a better meal! My only suggestion is that you let someone else dress the catfish. Yuck!

Famous dishes have historically taken their names from the chefs who invented them—Sole Dugléré, for example, was named after French chef Adolphe Dugléré. As a consultant to Finger Lakes Aquaculture, distinguished local chef Etienne Merle, who once ran well-loved Ithaca restaurants L’Auberge du Cochon Rouge and Valentine Café, created a recipe for Dugléré-style tilapia. The addition of curry and herbs gives the dish Etienne’s unmistakable touch.

Suzanne Stack regularly updates and modifies her menus to take advantage of the rich, vibrant flavors the time of year offers. The butternut squash for this dish is grown at Blue Heron Farm, just down the road from the 1903 farmhouse she has converted to one of the Finger Lakes’ most charming restaurants.

This tangy herring pickle somehow made its way from northern Europe to Nova Scotia, where you can find it in every grocery store. It’s like roll mops but less sweet. Here the classic preparation is done not with salted herring but with fresh salmon, which we salt the living daylights out of, then desalt and pickle in jars. It screams saltines and mustard. The Nova Scotians will tell you that the name Gundy is Nova Scotian, but the Brits, the French, and the Jamaicans all claim it for their own, too.

You will need a smoker that can be controlled or a grill and a chip box for this recipe and a supply of maple wood or maple wood chips.

We never went hungry as kids. And we have no inherent fear of the next Great Depression or anxiety about canned food. Still, we always want more. Wanting and eating four of the Swedish shrimp-egg things you can buy in the restaurant at IKEA is a good example of that. Another good example is how we would have piled more stuff on this modest toast if we could have fit it: a can of sardines from Bretagne, maybe, or quails stuffed with crab hiding in the corner. Our first reaction on seeing this photo was, “Shit, we forgot clams.” There are thirty items here, and if we do another book, we will put in sixty, we promise (just so we don’t run out of food). Disclaimer: In no way do we aspire or pretend to serve authentic Scandinavian food. This is just our view projected onto a classic. The closest we have been to Scandinavia is Fred Heimlich-maneuvering a Dane who choked on the biggest oyster ever eaten raw. And it was a weird experience because it was like they kissed; they were shy around each other for the rest of the evening. In the list that follows, an asterisk means a recipe is included. If there’s no *, it means the item is straightforward and you can figure it out. We suggest serving the items on rye bread or a baguette sliced lengthwise and buttered. You then eat your open-faced sandwich with a fork and knife. Or, you can do as we do: add condiments and eat it like a military strategist, portioning, placing, moving, and rationing. Regarding yields: the smorgasbord is more of a concept than a straightforward recipe. The smorgasbord shown here serves 4 to 6, and includes every single thing listed. You don’t have to follow our lead (though we would be pleased). Typically we put 4 or 5 proteins and 4 or 5 condiments on the average smorgasbord. Following this rule, each of the small recipes serves four.

The best image we have of bagna càuda is in the Time-Life Book, Cooking of Italy: a few stocky men and their elegant wives, towels around their necks, are sitting solemnly around a table in a brick vault. You would think they are about to eat ortolans or monkey brains, but no, they are enjoying long sticks of celery dipped in a warm butter-oil-anchovy bath. It’s a strange image, and we were inexplicably inspired by it. Bagna càuda is peasant yet elegant—the essence of Italian food. We love the flavor and the process of trimming the vegetables, and we (bittersweetly) think most people like bagna càuda because it tastes like Caesar salad. We serve our bagna càuda with a dip or aioli and have provided both options below.

When we wrote “mackerel” on the blackboard menu, it didn’t sell, so we renamed it silver tail and a star was born. Now when we serve silver tail with bacon and sage, or in a breakfast Benedict, it flies out of the kitchen. We sell so much that our supplier thinks we might be feeding farmed killer whales in the backyard. Our guys at McKiernan Luncheonette do a great job of smoking 50 pounds (23 kilograms) every week, which culminates with the Saturday brunch mackerel Benedict, with eggs, hollandaise, maple syrup, and an English muffin.

George Pullman was a fervent industrialist and a train man. He created the sleeping car, the hotel car, and eventually the dining car. Some say the Pullman sandwich loaf was designed after his cars. Others say it was designed to fit into the cube-shaped train shelves. Either way, this is an easy dish we would love to eat for breakfast—on the train, of course. This recipe makes one serving; use up the rest of the Pullman loaf making more boxes.

As we write this, it seems much more acceptable to spend $18 for an entire appetizer than it does to spend $180 an ounce for real caviar. What makes this setup grand is the ceremonial feel it has, like something you could get on the Orient Express. Feel free to use any kind of fish eggs: whitefish, salmon, trout, or even smoked or preserved fish. It’s also crucial that what you save on the real caviar, you spend on Champagne and on an overpriced silver serving dish from eBay. Eat it in your bed or on the bus.

Some chefs have decided cedar-planked fish is out of fashion, but we are still making it into the 2000s for two reasons: because it’s delicious and because our friend Mathieu, who is an amazing sculptor, will sometimes show up with some pretty radical cedar boards. Before starting this recipe, it’s a good idea to fill up the sink and soak your cedar board in cold water for as long as you can. This prevents a fire and makes the board a perfect steam generator for cooking the fish.

The Irish are famous for their smoked salmon, so it's a natural for a St. Patrick's Day party. Of course, you don't have to use Irish smoked salmon for these toasts; any cold–smoked salmon will work well, but if you're feeling flush, you will be treating yourself to salmon that is super–silky in texture with a distinct smokiness that comes from spending time near smoldering hardwoods such as oak and beechwood. If topping your salmon with anything other than a gentle squeeze of lemon seems like heresy, don't knock our tangy–sweet malt vinegar syrup until you've tried it. You just might get hooked.