Guide To Fish

The Age

Tuesday November 18, 2008

Leanne Tolra

Guide to Fish

Hilary McNevin

Fairfax Books, $29.95

She has compared barramundi to a friend of her husband - "all bravado ... showing off when girls are around" - and given the green light to Australian salmon, "a true-blue Aussie after all". But behind Hilary McNevin's own bravado, her first book, Guide to Fish, contains a serious message. McNevin, a hospitality management graduate and a freelance food writer, says her journey to improve her fish-cooking skills led her down an unexpected path. Confronted by questions about sustainability, seasonal availability and freshness, she developed the guide for like-minded shoppers. To start, there's a series of questions to ask when buying fish, a discussion about the ethics of farmed fish and a "red list" of species to avoid. What follows is a chapter on each of 23varieties of fish, colour-coded either green for buy regularly or amber for wild species that require some protection, with seasonal availability, cooking tips and beer and wine-matching hints. Each chapter contains a series of recipes. John Dory, coded amber, is poached and paired with zucchini salad, while that Aussie salmon, coded green, can be served crispy-skinned with prawn and potato crush, or poached and dressed with marinated eggplant and skordalia. -- LEANNE TOLRA

© 2008 The Age

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