Roy's Fish and Seafood: Recipes from the Pacific Rim [A Cookbook]

Roy's Fish & Seafood book is a delight to read and the recipes are a joy to complete. The infusion or "Euro-Asian" are easy to acomplish with his recipes and explanations. In this book he features seafood descriptions and substitutions and ingredient information that have helped me in achieving the perfect meal. That is providing one has all the ingredients on hand. I have also purchased Roy's Feasts from Hawaii Roy's Feasts from Hawaii and go back and forth combining recipes to come up with my own "infusion". If you enjoy reading, food photography and learning something new, this book is a great place to spend an afternoon.

I had been looking for collection of interesting seafood recipes for a while. Sorting through hundreds of recipes on web sites to find one really good recipe had become tedious and frustrating. Additionally, even great general cookbooks only contain a few solid recipes for fish. So I was very pleased to find this book. My wife and I have cooked five recipes so far and they have ranged from really good to "off the charts". The gourmet recipes usually combine Asian elements with something European and they usually include a unique sauce and an interesting side dish. Preparations are involved but you do not need to be a master chef to do a good job with the content. It does take some diligence to track down some of the ingredients and you will want access to plenty of fresh fish. If you are a passionate cook with moderate skill - and you like great seafood - I would recommend this book.

I enjoy dining at Roy's Restaurants. I ate there last week on the mainland, and have preferred eating the really fresh fish more "on site" at the Kauai restaurant. My favorite fish is the opa (moonfish), followed by the butterfish dishes. Roy's fresh fish are simply cooked, with tasty sauces and beautiful simple to elegantly more complex presentations. Unfortunately, his beautiful presentations are far more easily enjoyed in his restaurants, than attempted at home via this complex, yet (presumably) accurate cook book. There are problems/challenges in following these recipes for a beginning or average cook, that go beyond the hours spent collecting ingredients and preparing fish, sauces and stocks needed for these recipes. These attractive, Hawaiian inspired fusion recipes require collecting the basic ingredients, which can take : 1. A trip to one Asian grocery store to get ingredients which may include dashi, kombu seaweed, dried shrimp, bonito flakes, tobiko caviar, panko crumbs, daikon, furikake, kaffir lime leaf, red Thai curry paste, pickled pink ginger, mochiko (rice flour) ground sandalwood, lemongrass, mirin, palm sugar, bok choy etc (some grocery stores in larger cities may stock some of these ingredients). 2. A second trip to one or two conventional grocery stores in a larger city to collect the white truffle oil, fresh chervil , thyme and other herbs and spices, mango, clam juice, blue cheese, fresh cilantro, fresh shiitake mushrooms, etc. 3. A possible third trip to a top fish supplier to get truly fresh fish, if the local grocery's fish has that tell tale "fishiness" smell, indicating it has been improperly iced, or dead on ice for 5 days or more... The 237 pages of text has less than 90 actual recipes of fish, a somewhat disappointing number, however as most cooks do not cook even 10 recipes out of a book. That's not a drawback for me. (There are other recipes in the back for various stocks, oils, and sauces). Obtaining the fish Roy uses , such as butterfish species, pacific threadfin, sickle pomfret, wahoo, gray snapper, jackfish, or the wonderful opah will be difficult if not impossible for mainlanders not living in say San Francisco or Vancouver, with access to such fresh delights, so Roy has kindly supplied substitutions, which are still not easy to get.. Still there are 5 salmon recipes, 5 dolphin fish/mahi-mahi, and fifteen tuna recipes, so you won't be disappointed-there really are ample recipes to try! What is a disappointment and a drawback is that most of the recipes do not have the accompanying pictures of Roy's plating or presentation of that dish that one might hope for, especially after enjoying the beautiful pictures in Roy's 10 year old book, " Roy's Feasts from Hawaii ". Presentation to me is so important to serving an appetizing meal, and people buy Roy's books to hopefully duplicate or at least approach both the taste AND appearance of his dishes. The recipes are of mode

When I find a new cookbook I tend to just flip through the pages until I find something that strikes my attention. Nothing grabs my attention, then neither does the book. Once in a while I find something that I want to cook, then a page or two away something else, and then in another few pages -- well you get the idea. That was the case with this book. First I found "grilled garlic swordfish with chipotle chile sauce and polenta." Swordfish is certainly becoming common, but I've always found it to be so mild that it had no flavor. Chili sauce on top of it, sounds really good. And polenta is just yankee talk for grits. Being a southerner anything with grits has got to be good. Tonight's dinner. A few pages away is "seared ahi tuna with lilikoi-shrimp salsa." Just the picture was enough to attract my attention. The tuna is seared really hard, hard enough that the top looks almost well done. But this was done on a relly hot cast iron skillet. It was only cooked for a half minute on each side for rare to 1 and a half minutes for medium-rare. It's beautiful. And then the passion fruit (Lilikoi) shrimp salsa sounds like it would add a most interesting set of conflicting tastes. Next Saturday when guests are coming over. It turns out that there are several tuna recipes, a lot of them sound good. I like tuna, and it's something that most of my guests seem to like. I'll use several of these. As the title says, this book is on fish and seafood. There's no beef, pork, etc. in it. This is a welcome addition to the bookshelf, as even here in the desert west we are seeing a lot more variety in seafood, and more and more people are asking for it.