Two Sustainable Seafood Cookbooks

Dan Donovan, proprietor of Toronto's amazing sustainable fish shop Hooked, says the barrier that stops most people from cooking seafood in general – and sustainable seafood in particular – is that they don't know how and are timid to start. Here are a couple of great cookbooks that offer a wealth of information to help with that. The Ocean Wise Cookbook, edited by Jane Mundy (Whitecap Books, 2010) comes from Ocean Wise, an organization founded by the Vancouver Aquarium "to educate and empower consumers about the issues surrounding sustainable seafood," partly by working with restaurants across the country.

Even if you don't try any of the recipes, you'll learn a lot from this book's very thorough opening discussion of what makes seafood sustainable (or not). The species that are discussed are most available in West-Coast and central Canada, but the principles are the same anywhere; for instance, in general it's better to eat small fish rather than big ones, or, to put it another way: eat low on the food chain.

Trying to determine which species are truly sustainable is a moving-target challenge. There are few simple rules of thumb. (An exception? Shellfish: farmed bivalves like oysters, mussels, clams and scallops are almost always a sustainable choice.) Some farmed fish are sustainable, but others are not. Big fish farms in "open net pens" in the sea can concentrate waste and diseases, wrecking the balance of the surrounding ecosystem. Therefore you should actually stay away from salmon raised this way, even though the conventional rule of thumb says that farmed salmon is sustainable. However, freshwater fish raised in land-based fisheries are fine.

"Line caught" fish can be very sustainable, if it means one person with one fishing rod and one hook has caught one fish. But "long-line" fishing is a bad thing. Harpooned fish are sustainable, but (as Dan of Hooked explained to me), some boats with harpoon licenses also use less sustainable methods, so you really need a committed fishmonger to help you find out what's happening on every single fishing vessel.

For decades, good cooks have scoffed at frozen fish, but now some of the best chefs swear by "frozen at sea". The flash-freeze maintains a far better product than the fish carcass that's been swilling around unfrozen for two or three days.

The Ocean Wise Cookbook offers lots of tips on how to prep and cook seafood, including unusual items like abalone and octopus, and tons of great recipes sourced from top Canadian chefs. Consider Giant Pacific Octopus with Wild Boar Chorizo (and yes, it includes the recipe for the chorizo). There are also less challenging choices, like Grilled Salmon Burgers.

Pangaea is a delightful Toronto restaurant that I would eat at far more often if I were a little wealthier. Chef Martin Kouprie has an infectious love of his local ingredients, and does far more cooking from scratch even than most fine-dining chefs generally do; his kitchen has become well known for its house cheeses, for instance. The restaurant is also Ocean Wise certified.

Pangaea. Why it tastes so good. by Martin Kouprie with photos by James Tse (Key Porter Books, 2010) documents his love of the ingredients and his community of foragers, farmers and restaurant staff. It presents a roster of seasonally arranged appetizers, mains and desserts. (Oh, the desserts! Like Lemon Tarts with Stewed Cranberries, Meyer Lemon and Buttermilk Sherbet, Poppy Seed Meringue Shards, and Chantilly Cream). The back of the book features chef-school essentials like stocks and sauces.

Not all the savoury courses are seafood-based, of course. There are recipes using more exotic meats like quail, bison, rabbit, duck and pheasant, along with the more familiar lamb, beef and pork. But perhaps half are seafood recipes, like the springy Spot Prawns on Green and White Asparagus, Olive Oil Béarnaise Sauce, Abitibi Caviar, and Chervil. (I can't help feeling that "Abitibi Caviar" should be slang for something like poutine, but it's actually an Ontario sturgeon caviar.) Like The Ocean Wise Cookbook, this is a book for the experienced or adventurous home cook, but beginners will find both books inspiring and absorbing just to read and look at.

I'm also looking forward to the March 2012 release of The River Cottage Fish Book: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and Shellfish by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher. Among other titles that I have not yet read, there are several that look very credible, some of which might offer more recipes for those who live in the U.S. and along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. These include:

• A Good Catch: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from Canada's Top Chefs by Jill Lambert and David Suzuki
• Ocean Friendly Cuisine: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the World's Finest Chefs by James O. Fraioli, The Monterey Bay Aquarium and Jean-Michel Cousteau
• Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast by Becky Selengut
• One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish: The Smithsonian Sustainable Seafood Cookbook by Carole C. Baldwin, Julie Mounts and Julie H. Mounts.

If you do have access to products from the Pacific Northwest, Ocean Wise recommends experimenting with some of the lesser known seafoods like lingcod (a big Pacific fish that's not actually related to cod); geoduck: a very large clam, pronounced "Gooey Duck"; spot prawns (a large and tasty Pacific prawn, available in May and June), and sablefish, AKA butterfish or black cod. Octopus, farmed trout and walleye are equally wise picks. Finally, to ease the strain on some struggling species:

• Instead of Atlantic cod, try Pacific cod or haddock
• Instead of salmon, try Arctic char
• Instead of bluefin tuna, try Albacore tuna
• Instead of red snapper, try tilapia, sablefish or Pacific cod