Long Island Seafood Cookbook

I'm so glad there are copies of this available! I lost mine, and I miss it. Great recipes, most of them are dated, all of them are adaptable, and every one of them sounds delicious. If there were a restaurant that cooked only out of this book, I'd eat there every night for the rest of my life. Next time you're invited to a party, make the clam pie. Better make two -- everyone will want more! This is a fun book to read, too -- and I'm not a "foodie." Brad (first review) -- if you re-issue this, I'll be the first to buy it!

[Review written Jan 2005] This is a charming little book from 1939 that (as of this writing) is sadly out of print ... although you can still find copies here and there. It has a lot of flaws - it's poorly indexed, the methods are more than a little dated and vague and poorly edited in places, but despite all that this book has some qualities that endear it to me: * It's a local book (like the late author, I live on Long Island), and it's about old fashioned local seafood cuisine. * It's got some wonderful bits of local historical information, on things like the shellfishing industry, etc. I grew up in close proximity to this sort of thing, and it's intimately involved with my sense of "home". * The author was a gourmand and apparently something of a fixture in the local gourmet society of the day (which, sadly, no longer exists). He's also a man of strong opinions with a tendency to wax eloquent with little or no provocation (there's a great diatribe in there on the differences between "manhattan" and "new england" style clam chowder). I can relate to an author like that, because we share a lot in common. * Many of the recipes are of the old fashioned variety that are rarely seen and made anymore. Clam and/or oyster pie, fish 'scraple' casseroles (pound your own crackers into meal, open a tin of evaporated milk, and melt some butter before proceeding), etc. In any case, it's a quirky little historical book that I happen to love, despite it's many and varied flaws. I tried contacting the publisher some years back (the author died some time ago), and expressed interest in helping to re-edit and re-release it, but never got a reply. Someday writing my own version lies deep down on my list of things to do in life. I'll get to it eventually, fate & circumstances permitting. Probably after my book on Mead though. Very enjoyable. Add a 5th star if you love to cook, love seafood, love old cookbooks & cranky gourmands, and live near the water.

I love *good* seafood and I am very picky about taste. I have a small collection of ~15 cookbooks and I have looked at over 50+ while browsing in bookstores. I got this cook book as a gamble (you can't browse when you shop online) but because I love seafood and the book was inexpensive, I said "What the heck" and brought it. What I've tried from the book was simply delicious. It's well written, easy to follow, and for the real chefs out there, you can either read it for a skeleton for what you want to make or maybe give you thoughts of different combinations of ingredients you didn't think of or have forgotten about. I normally do not rank many things very highly but this is one of the few that made it to the top of my list. Oh yes, did I mention that the book is less expensive and has better receipes than other more expensive cookbooks out there? One thing I should mention is that it's not just a seafood cookbook. Happy Cooking!