Notes about Recipes in this book

• Txalaparta bread dip

  • twoyolks on May 18, 2020

    The anchovies added flavor but I found that they were too strong for my taste.

• Pacific cod with ginger-braised asparagus

  • Laura on April 01, 2012

    Pg. 69. This is a very simple recipe that comes together very quickly. That said, this recipe is not for the beginner cook as it offers no information about cook times. It apparently assumes that the home cook will know how long to brown those fillets under the broiler (under 3 minutes) and then how long to keep the fillets in the oven after placing them on the lowest rack and turning off the heat. Also, the recipe directs you to cook the asparagus until the liquid has reduced to a 'glaze.' I cooked mine until a fork told me that the asparagus were done, whereupon I removed the asparagus and continued to reduce the sauce. The results were good, but not great.

• Wild striped bass with cilantro-onion salad and yogurt-avocado purée

  • twoyolks on July 17, 2017

    I was pleasantly surprised by this. The fish was crispy on the skin side and moist throughout. The yogurt-avocado purée compliments the fish well. I liked the cilantro-onion salad. This was fast to make and pretty easy. You do need a very ripe avocado to really purée it easily. There was no instruction to add salt or pepper to the fish so I did it just before cooking it.

• Tilapia with lemon brown butter

  • twoyolks on February 07, 2018

    The sauce was nice but the tilapia itself was just bland.

• Mahimahi with grilled peaches and buttermilk-mint dressing

  • Laura on September 07, 2012

    Pg. 113. We enjoyed this very much. A very light summer meal and very easy to prep. The buttermilk dressing was very light, and provided a nice flavor to the arugula/red onion salad. We grilled on a gas grill. One quibble -- I think the cooktimes are way off. He directs the cook to grill those peaches on HIGH for 20 minutes with the grill top closed! I've grilled a lot of peaches and I knew that grilling them for that long would have turned them to total mush. Our peaches were perfectly done in about half that time, with the grill top closed only about half that time. We used halibut fillets in place of the mahimahi and our fillets were about 3/4-1 inch thick. We brushed them with a bit of olive oil and grilled them on high for about 8 minutes, 4 minutes per side, and they were perfectly done.

• Grilled king salmon with tarragon butter

  • twoyolks on February 23, 2017

    A nice pairing of salmon and compound butter. The orange zest complemented the salmon nicely. While this was grilled, there wasn't much grill or smoke flavor imparted on the salmon.

• Salmon with minted cucumbers

  • Barb_N on April 10, 2019

    This is an easy weeknight preparation, the salmon extra moist from poaching. I worried the apple cider vinegar would lend the wrong note with the other flavors of ginger and soy (I woud have picked rice wine vinegar) but it had the acidity needed for the cucumbers. I served with rice noodles in a dipping type sauce rather than as a salad.

• Warm poached salmon in red wine sauce

  • DKennedy on May 21, 2012

    Good but recipe needs some tweaking. Next time I would season and roast the salmon on a preheated, greased baking sheet. Try it at 425 for 5 minutes on a rack set in the upper 1/3 of the oven. Meanwhile, I would make the wine sauce on the stove top, reducing it to about 1/4 cup. When the skin is crisped and the salmon is just undercooked, transfer it to the sauce and poach for the last few minutes of cooking. This, I believe, would help with the texture considerably.

• Sablefish with lentils and pomegranate-red wine butter

  • DKennedy on May 21, 2012

    Made this lentil dish to accompany the salmon in red wine sauce. The lentils were very good. I would cut the recipe in 1/2 next time, it made way too much. Dave did not like the smoked flavor. I loved it but next time I will use 1/2 smoked and 1/2 sweet.

• Broccoli rabe and potato gratin

  • Laura on May 22, 2012

    I chose this dish after reading Susie's review of the cookbook on EYB and she wrote that this was her favorite recipe. Barton mentions in the intro to the recipe that this is his wife's favorite dish. I have to say that, after reading the recipe, I was quite skeptical that this would turn into a stellar dish. But, given the previously mentioned endorsements, I forged ahead. I followed it exactly and what I ended up with was nothing special at all. The potatoes were not quite cooked and the taste of the dish was unremarkable. I questioned why it was called a 'gratin,' since 'gratin' means 'with a brown crust,' most often associated with a cheese or breadcrumb topping. I guess he meant that the rabe should form the brown crust, but since he also instructed the cook to toss the rabe with the potatoes prior to the final stint under the broiler, that hardly makes for a 'crust.' Anyway, I found it to be without much flavor and a waste of a good bunch of broccoli rabe.

  • Breadcrumbs on May 22, 2012

    I appreciated Laura's review and it would be helpful to see Susie's Notes/Review here as well. I'd considered purchasing this book but will await more recipe reviews in EYB. Amazon reviews are positive but scarce.

• Broiled pears with orange and honey

  • DKennedy on May 21, 2012

    Excellent as written.

• Fish brine 2 for hot smoking

  • Rinshin on September 01, 2021

    Outstanding smoked salmon. Added dried tangerine peel and bourbon directly in to brine. Brined for 3 hr 30 min. Pulled out and placed on rimmed rack with sheet pan overnight in fridge to produce pellicles. Brushed again with bourbon in the morning. Smoked for 2 hrs at 295F. Melt in your mouth texture with faint smokiness. Best method yet in 30 years of annual summertime salmon smoking. Photo added

• Boston Globe by T. Susan Chang

  ...has a little of that translated-from-restaurantese quality that one often sees in chefs’ first books. Recipes evince a bias toward plating/presentation, a certain disregard for the number of pots..

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• Lisa Is Cooking

  It acts as a guide to all the issues surrounding how to choose fish, and then it provides great ideas for turning those fish into meals.

  Full review