50 Ways with Fish

Oh boy do I love this cookbook! The layout is the only way to go: recipe on one page, and photograph of the completed dish on the other. Lots of input for visually-oriented males (or females), but also no need to turn pages when your hands are covered with flour or whatever.And the recipes are truly different. On the strength of this book, I bought another of the "50 Ways With..." titles, about chicken, but it turned out to be an endless procession of "boneless chicken breast with [fill in the blank] sauce" recipes.I think I might have made all 45 gems. Let me give you a partial list of recipes that I have confidently made for the first time with company arriving shortly:Baked Fish Nicoise: (startlingly light and tasty -- perfect for a female guest).Baked Fish With BroccoliChili Con Pesce: (wonderful idea, but it needed a little adjusting)Continental Fish Cakes: (I laid in 2 lb of fresh cod for four people, but could easily have gone through twice as much).Fish Florentine: (one of the ten best things I've ever delivered to the table).Fish With a Mustard and Herb Crust: After eating something similar at the Black Dog on Martha's Vineyard, I came home and violently tore into my cookbooks until I found this superior equivalent. Give the World's cod population three or four years to recover (this is 2003), then treat yourself to pure fish heaven.Enough gushing - There is a dud. The Fish and Fennel Gratin just does not work at all. If I was crazy enough about the concept, I would bake the fennel "blind" for 25 minutes, then add the fish and topping and continue baking, but there are far finer things to pursue in this world, like the Old English Fish Pie. I have authority here, since I come from the Old Country, and this remarkably-simple recipe does an absolutely wonderful job of balancing fresh and smoked fish flavours in a dish that just vanishes as soon as it is set down on the table. My fish-hating stepdaughter inhaled about a quart of it before thinking to ask what was in it.So, to summarize: Out of my 200+ cookbooks, this one ranks in the top ten.