Rick Stein
Guidance and inspiration from an expert.
Fruits of the Sea [buy]
In Fruits of the Sea, Rich breaks his recipes into categories such as deep-fried fish, light lunch dishes and most importantly: hot and spicy fish. You’ll also find basic stocks and sauces and a list of alternative fish for the American and Australian markets. The book is as user-friendly as always, and once more brings to light Rick’s joy of combining spices with fish and seafood.
The Indian recipes included are all from Goa; so lots of heat and coconut. There are also a few Thai recipes and spicy versions of English food (such as mild potato curry topped with smoked haddock & poached egg). All in all, a great book full of easy to cook recipes and plenty of spice!
Favourite recipes: green monkfish & prawn curry, goan fish curry, Thai red seafood, hot & sour prawn soup.
Seafood Odyssey [buy]
One of my favourite recipe books. As a keen, but amateur cook, one of the best parts of this book is the introduction where Rick explains, with photos, how to prepare all sorts of fish. He does a very good job at taking some of the mystery out of it.
However, the highest recommendation I can give is that I have been lucky enough to eat at Rick’s Seafood Restaurant in Cornwall, and afterwards attempted to recreate my meal using this book. I must say that the results were amazing – my Kingfish Curry tasted almost exactly like my main course in the restaurant and it was even pretty easy to make! On top of that, Rick’s prawn papads are an absolute joy.
Favourite recipes: prawn papads, kingfish curry, shark vindaloo.