The Flexible Pescatarian

Delicious recipes all types of fish for all levels of chefs.Gorgeous pictures a pleasure to look at .I will be gifting fish loving friends with this beautiful book .#netgalley #quartobooks,

This original cookbook shows you how to delicous and healthy recipes with a large variety of fish fillet,whole fish and seafood. An excellent source of omega 3.
#TheFlexiblePescatarian #NetGalley

A simply amazing cook book for fish and seafood. The recipes are simple, bursting with flavour and so easy to follow.

I'm not a huge lover of fish or seafood but this book has me excited about it and I will certainly be experimenting lots over the coming weeks. There are also some fantastic recipes for side dishes, sauces and salads in the book.

I couldn't write a review on this book without mentioning the stunning photography, it really is amazing. I stared at some of those plates for well over five minutes, they look fantastic.

My friends can expect an invitation to my house very soon so I can show off some of these recipes.

Although I received an advance digital copy of this book in return for an honest review (thank you to the Publisher and Netgalley) I will definitely still be going out and buying a hard copy of this book for my library.

Can I just mention the pretty cover?

As for the cookbook. My fave part was "fish preparation", I love how the author went step by step, teaching a lot of things that are important but not everybody knows. I believe the cookbook should have started with this chapter because not everybody looks at the contents and this way it's very easily missed.

I marked several recipes to try them later. Funnily all of them are vegetarian, not pescetarian. Which is a bit funny. I cannot wait to try the spring onion and carrot bhajis, it looks delicious!

However, I did not feel that the cookbook was well balanced. Too many recipes with mackerels and pretty often I kept thinking that something was missing in the recipe. I got a bit "oily" vibe from this cookbook.

Some recipes were pretty hard; I had no idea how I would do it. And some were so easy that I had no idea why you would feel the need to put them in a cookbook. Especially the salad part, a recipe for tomato salad of tomato, onion, lemon/oil/salt/black pepper and basil leaves is pointless.

This beautiful, fish-centric cookbook is full of pretty photographs, and in addition to the recipes it also provides good technical advice on selecting and working with fresh fish. The artsy, highly off-center photo croppings are visually attractive, but occasionally I found myself wishing for a more informative shot--or indeed any shot at all in some of the methods sections on filleting, etc., precisely where photos would have been most useful. There are many solid recipes in here, but too few that jumped out as especially tempting to try. My reaction to most things was more along the lines of "sure, I wouldn't mind eating that" than "wow, I want to cook that immediately." Some of the non-fish recipes look great but are so basic most people won't need another recipe for them (charred asparagus, pasta puttanesca, etc.). The occasional term would have benefited from conversion to American English (I needed the photo to identify tenderheart as broccolini).

4.5 Stars

There is a real Scandi-feel to this book, partly because it’s very fish-based but also the minimalist photos give it that quality -it must be the marble bench-tops and scattered ice. It’s beautiful!

As the Introduction says: “A totally plant-based diet is good for the environment, good for your body [and] good for your bank account”, but some of us find the transition to that kind of diet too difficult. This book makes the job easier, creating fish-based recipes with completely vegetarian alternatives that are creative and tasty.

Highlights for me are:

Hot smoked salmon pâté. It’s amazing - super-tasty, quick, healthy and protein-rich because it uses salmon as well as cream cheese and yoghurt. I preferred this with the Cucumber, Caper and Lemon salad (later in the book) than the one suggested alongside the recipe;
Goats cheese and potato salad with pear marmalade. Salty, slightly sweet and delicious.
Chilli-baked feta with watermelon salad. Listed under the starters but this is good for a main.
Aromatic gin and cucumber-cured salmon. Essentially gravadlax. There is a great tip mentioned at the bottom of the page here – i.e. to freeze the fish for 24 hours after purchasing it to ensure that any nasties are done away with before preparing the fish.
Slow-roasted sweet potato with feta, pomegranate and pistachio. Not ground-breaking but a new way of doing an old dish.
Crab, asparagus and lemon risotto. Just yum!

I wanted to try the Five-Spiced, tea-smoked salmon but haven’t been brave enough yet.

The “time taken“ feature on each recipe is so useful because you can easily decide what you have time for. I stayed clear of any recipes that were going to take longer than one hour of prep because I simply don’t have the patience. From another practical perspective, it is also great to see that both metric and imperial measurements are listed.

This book surpassed the Part Time Vegetarian book I read last year by a different author but with a similar concept. It is cleaner and to me has more recipes I feel comfortable using.

The recipes aren’t all suitable for those who are gluten intolerant but they are easily adaptable and there are plenty of starters that can be adapted to main dishes that contain no flour, pasta or pastry.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Quarto Publishing Group - White Lion Publishing and Jo Pratt for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

OK, I will be the first to admit, I don't care for sea food... but this book was more than just fish, as I first assumed. It had some wonderful vegetable dishes in there, too. Those I was really super impressed with and will be trying one of them tonight. I even saw some new ingredients that sounded interesting to me, such as I had no clue what "harissa" was but I do now. Always good to learn about new ingredients and new recipes.

It almost makes me want to try some fish dishes. Yes, I know that they are probably healthy, so I should try to incorporate them into my family's diet. This book might just convince even me! I was very impressed with the pictures of the recipes and I will be trying them.

I felt this was a great addition to my cookbooks. Time to start trying some new recipes and a new way of healthy eating. Can't wait to try!

If you love fish read this book. After just a browse through all the recipes and information contained within I love it. The photographs make me want to head into the kitchen and prepare fish for lunch/dinner or even breakfast.

I do enjoy fish and vegetarian food way more than meat so this book is perfect for me. There are 75 recipes in the book and after reading through them I know that I will enjoy 74 (I don't like squid in any shape or size so that recipe is off my list).

I received a digital ARC of this book to review and I'm now buying a hard copy for myself.

#TheFlexiblePescatarian #NetGalley

I was drawn to this book because I am trying to become more comfortable cooking with seafood, and trying to add more healthy seafood dishes to our diet. This book is pretty adventurous for me, but it definitely accomplishes it's goals. Filled with terrific recipes from various parts of the world, this cookbook offers lots of great dishes that include fish that you won't have seen in a ton of other books. There are lots of pictures for inspiration, although there is not a picture of each completed dish, which is something I personally prefer--but there are a lot of beautiful pictures. There are a lot of tips and "flexible" options--the author offers suggestions for making various recipes vegetarian, or for using other fish, and lets you know what to expect if you make her suggested changes. There is a terrific section at the back that I found especially helpful that talks about buying seafood, cooking with seafood, etc. The seasoned cook probably won't need it, but I needed it and was very glad it was there. I found it well written and educational. The recipes themselves do not include nutritional information, which I personally found a little disappointing, but I suspect would be challenging as you can change the fish you use in each recipe which would change the nutritional values. The recipes themselves are divided into four sections: Snacks and Small Plates; Broths, Soups and Curries; Mains and Sharing; and Salads and Sides. Overall, I thought this book is an excellent addition to the collection of any Pescatarian or anyone just looking to add a little more adventurous seafood cooking to their repertoire.

Fish glorious fishl

This is perhaps best described as a "fish-centric" cook book. There are some purely vegetarian dishes interspersed among the fish. There's also a flexible option for many of the recipes - either alternative fish or vegetarian twists.

I confess that I didn't take to this book at first. I was bemused by the veggie dishes. The recipes seemed rather cheffy in their ingredient lists. Reading through some recipes I was concerned that powerful flavours might overwhelm the fish. Determined to give it a fair go, I've taken it to Brittany with me where there's an abundance of fresh fish. So far I've enjoyed an adapted version of the smoky bean and monkfish stew and am set to cook the fried sardine, courgette and caper linguine. All is going well so far, though I wish I'd brought more of my store cupboard ingredients with me.

About those fresh fish. I can't imagine walking into an English supermarket and seeing glistening monkfish tails piled up. The author is very good however about suggesting alternative fish and indeed substitutes for harder to find ingredients.

Photography is glorious and very arty. There's a photo of each finished dish, important to many.

It would have been great to have lists of recipes at the start of each section.

As someone who doesn't eat meat, my diet can tend to look pretty boring (there's only so much grilled cheese you can eat, you know?) So, I was excited to find a cookbook that's dedicated to pescatarians (since I do eat fish). This was a gorgeous book with lots of stunning pictures of delicious foods. However, most of the recipes seemed really complicated to me (as someone who doesn't have a whole lot of cooking experience), so there weren't a lot of recipes that seemed doable. Also, most of the ingredients aren't something that basic cooks will have at home. However, for someone who can easily whip up difficult recipes, there are plenty of yummy-sounding dishes to prepare. I was definitely left drooling over the Moroccan tomato and bread soup, the speedy prawn paella, and the roast squash, beetroot, and chickpea salad - all of which seemed like recipes I might actually be able to replicate. With a great blend of different cuisines from all over the world, I'll certainly be recommending this cookbook to my fellow pescatarians.

I really liked this book, as a vegan I obviously wont be including the fish, diary or meat elements into the recepies but i found some good basic ideas that i could put my own spin on and use as a foundation for some new vegan recepies. I have various other books by Jo Pratt so i was already a fan of hers before reading this new book. I highly recommend it having said that no all recepies will be to everyone’s taste, but there is something for everyone’s diet in the book. Thank you for the ARC.

This book, which is all about fish, caught my eye since I am an avid fish lover. It did not disappoint! I assumed that I would come across the regular menu of fish with new ideas sprinkled in. Wow was I wrong! It is page after page of unique recipes, with photos,and a nice variety of different fish. I have tried two recipes so far and both were delicious and fairly easy! Hopefully others will pick up this book, I surely recommend it!

This is one of those cookbooks that makes fish interesting and there's quite a few good photos in it. There's more to fish than just fish fingers and this book shows that in a good way.

I received a temporary digital copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review.

This was a wonderful cookbook with beautiful pictures. While there are some recipes that you may have to hunt around for the ingredients, I think this was a delightful collection that I might have to buy.

Pratt has written an enjoyable fish cookbook. I enjoyed all the side dishes that accompany fish. It's a well written easy to follow cook book.

Long ago I bought a fancy fish cookbook in hopes of cooking more fish and seafood for our meals. I never used the cookbook as it had to many complicated recipes. I was so happy to read The Flexible Pescatarian by Jo Pratt as her cookbook offers approachable recipes. Recipes that you will probably use in your daily cooking. Good recipes in other words.

I loved her chapter called Fish Preparation as she clearly explains how to buy fish, choose fish, the types of fish and how to prepare fish. In particular I loved her tip about buying frozen fish. As she writes the fish is often frozen on board the ship so you are guaranteed fresh fish. As I live far away from the sea it's comforting knowing frozen fish is a good option for me to choose thanks to her tip.

Some of the recipes you'll find in her cookbook include:

Hot Smoked Salmon Pate with Pickled Fennel and Radish Salad
Malaysian Prawn and Pineapple Curry
Baked Sea Bass with Potatoes, Anchovies and Lemon
Cucumber, Caper and Lemon Salad (her cookbook includes side dishes to serve with your meals)

Recommend.

Review written after downloading a galley from NetGalley.

What a beautiful book! Even as an ebook, I can see what care went into the photography, the font, the design. It's a very well thought out cookbook! I feel like it will be even better in print. While I haven't specifically tried any of the recipes, they read easy enough for even the non-seasoned chef to create! But it was the beautiful photos that sold it for me. And I appreciate that the receipts each had a picture. So often cookbooks pick and choose wha they want to feature. This one will stand the test of time, I'm sure!

Thanks, Netgalley, for the ARC!

What a great book! As a pescatarian who lives with a vegetarian this is perfect for me, many of the dishes (the wonderful puttanesca springs to mind) are adaptable for him too.

It’s also very attractively photographed with simple, straightforward recipes.

My new favourite cook book.

What a fabulous book. From the first flick through of the digital version, I knew this was a book that would inspire. Gorgeous photography and simple, mouthwatering recipes, there are very appetising new twists on not just fish but vegetables and salads. Very inspiring and lovely to look at, I'm glad to have it in my library and in my kitchen.

I rarely eat chicken, meat or dairy foods, but I do eat a lot of fish. This book contains original and inspiring recipes to tempt you, along with plenty of alternative fish and veggie variations (and easy to adapt for my dairy-free diet too!). Full of beautiful photos to enhance this book further, I can see myself using this book time and time again for feeding both the family and for dinner parties. Creative, tasty and healthy. This book will be a very worthwhile addition to any recipe book collection.

Many thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this ARC for which I have given my voluntary and unbiased review.

This is a good cookbook if you know your way around the kitchen, young cooks might have a hard time with some of the recipes though. I thought that the fish preparation was a wonderful addition to the cookbook, but that it would make better sense to move it to the front, since there are many people who don’t read a cookbook through, just picking and choosing which parts to read and they would miss out on a much needed education on how to properly prepare the fish for cooking.
There are quite a few recipes I’ve marked for trying, some that are definitely beyond even my level of home cooking, and I’ve made a couple and enjoyed them. The photographs definitely help and are stunning.
**I received an ARC from Netgalley and this is my honest and voluntary review

Thank you, Quarto Publishing Group and NetGalley for a digital advance reader copy.

This was a gorgeous collection of pescatarian recipes and side dishes accompanied with beautiful photographs! I loved browsing this book and cannot wait to prepare many of the recipes (including the smashed avocado and sardines on toast, salt cod croquetas and smoky haddock and clam chowder). I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone looking to eat a healthier diet and incorporate more seafood recipes.

This is a book that focuses on including seafood alongside a vegetarian diet. It has plenty of interesting recipes to pick from. There are four main sections: Snack & small plates, Broths, soups & curries, Mains & sharing and Salads & sides.

Each recipe comes with imperial and metric measurements, plenty of steps to follow and a colour photograph of the finished dish.

I received this book from netgalley in return for a honest review.

Absolutely fabulous book, wonderful recipes, beautiful photography.
I am always looking for tasty fish recipes, most books have a few here and there but concentrate mainly on meat dishes. This is purely fish, shellfish the like with a touch of salad accompaniment in the last chapter. In this book seafood is the champion and the flavours of this fabulous "Pesca" is bought to the fore.
Lovely and informative book.

Are you familiar with the concept of pescetarianism? It is most easily defined as vegetarianism plus fish, but the author of this book refers to see it the other way around: a pescatarian is one who would like to eat a more vegetarian diet, eschewing meats of the land, but still desires to have fish and shellfish.

I am just a straight-up vegetarian, but I was intrigued by the concept of this book. Nearly every recipe is either a vegetarian dish that can be made flexible with seafood additions, a seafood dish that can be made vegetarian with substitutions, or has a component that is vegetarian (like a homemade granola that’s a part of a fish dish). The book did not disappoint in its creativity. The author chose some surprising substitutions for fish, especially in recipes that are considered to be fish dishes like Ceviche or Herring and Potato Salad. For the ceviche, the author swapped out hearts of palm for the fish, while in the salad recipe, goat’s cheese was used (which even some seafood lovers may prefer!).

The author is British but does provide American weights and measures for ingredients. There is definitely is British phrasing, vocabulary, and punctuation, but that just adds to the unique character of the cookbook. The book is simply divided into just four chapters: Snack & Small Plates, Soups & Curries, Mains, and Salads & Sides.

Whether you are a vegetarian, a pescatarian, or omnivore who just wants to add creative seafood dishes to their repertoire, you will find this cookbook brimming with recipes that will most likely inspire your own creativity.

This is a recipe book worth having if just for the chapter on Snacks and Small Plates. Reminiscent of the recipes of Peter Gordon and Yotam Ottolenghi, there are some really interesting combinations of texture and flavour. So the Herring and Potato Salad in itself was a flavoursome dish, but combined with a very simple-to-make Pear Marmalade, became something special. Serving mashed sardines with avocado, enhanced with a little chilli and coriander (Mashed Avocado and Tinned Sardines on Toast) was such a simple concept, but delicious. I have not tried the Chilli-Baked Feta served with a Watermelon Salad, but that it certainly on my list of things to try soon because the combination sounds so appealing. The Slow Roasted Sweet Potato with Feta, Pomegrantae and Pistachios was quick to prepare, yet delicious; I really liked the smoky paprika crunchy skin combined with the interesting textures and flavours of the topping. Another on my list to try is the Pea and Beetroot Pancakes - what fun to have two different coloured blinis served with smoked salmon, horseradish and pickled cucumber!

I have to admit to not being very enthusiastic about Pratt’s earlier book, “The Flexible Vegetarian”; however the soup recipes in that book were excellent, and that made me interested enough to read “The Flexible Pescatarian” I was happy to see that this book has excellent photos (the earlier book had lots of unnecessary photos unrelated to the recipes) and whilst the concept is similar, I found the “flexible” aspect of this book, in a feature at the bottom of some of the recipes, to be far less contrived.

The other chapters, Broths Soups and Curries, Mains and Sharing and Salads and Sides were not as exciting as the first chapter, but still some recipes worth making. Smoky Bean and Monkfish Stew was very simple, but surprisingly good served more like a soup with chunky bread. South Indian Fish Curry tasted more Thai to me than Indian, but was still flavoursome. However, the honey based marinade on the Teriyaki Tuna Steaks burnt far too easily and I am not sure that I would choose to use expensive crayfish tails to make a fish pie (Crayfish, Sweetcorn and Potato Pie)

The book ends with a chapter on choice and preparation of fish. It includes useful advice such as pin-boning, skinning etc but as it is aimed at the novice cook, it could have benefitted from a few photos.

This is a cookbook filled with beautiful food photography and delicious looking recipes. All of the recipes are detailed and most have a vegetarian option so you can decide whether to have a fish dish or a vegetarian dinner.
At the end of the book you will find a bunch of tutorials that will help you buy good fish and prepare it properly. I wish the author had put this chapter at the beginning of the book because it is a really useful and great information to have before buying the ingredients.

Ein Kochbuch, das aus der Masse heraussticht:
mit teils einfachen, aber sehr leckeren, raffinierten Gerichten, ansprechenden Fotos und was sonst noch dazu gehört.
Motto: mehr Fisch auf den Tisch.
(naja, meistens!)

We don't eat as much fish as I would like because I simply didn't have a clue how to cook it. This book is fantastic and I found it so helpful, the recipes I tried were quite easy and very tasty.

TITLE: These recipes are pleasantly approachable, with easily accessible ingredients

There are some great recipes here. I wondered if I would be able to find enough of the seafood and fish called for in these recipes, especially since this author is based in London. But most everything is accessible. These recipes use easy-to-find ingredients—and for a lot of us who don’t live within driving range of a coast line or large metro area, that’s important. So, thank you Jo Pratt, for that consideration.

In this “Flexible” cook book, Ms. Pratt tries to incorporate seafood, or seafood as an add-in, or as an alternative, into most of her recipes. Almost like, “include it or not, it’s up to you”, thus taking the pressure off if you are just inching your way into eating seafood and fish. The technique works.

There are many creative starters and small bites. Plenty of soups and lots of bowl food—and the soup chapter is one of my favorite.

For instance, Asian Green Broth is luscious if you enjoy fresh, green veggies. Add sliced squid, prawns, crab meat or crawfish to make the dish more substantial. And a roast vegetable vindaloo, to which you can add some shrimp to the baking sheet for the last 10 minutes of cooking. Lots of curries.

There is herring with potato salad that uses marinated/pickled herring—available in any grocery store, including Walmart if that’s all you have near. (I’ve been in that situation, so I can appreciate recipes like this.)

In the “Mains” chapter there is a tea-smoked salmon, teriyaki marinated mackerel, stir-fried squid, roasted whole trout, griddled tuna, chopped cod burgers, baked bass, and a lot more.

There is a small variety of salads and sides, with and without fish or seafood.

And every once in a while there is a recipe that’s totally vegetarian: Smoky Padron peppers, slow roasted sweet potatoes, olive oil hollandaise dip, just to name a few.

There are plenty of substitutes offered: Take for instance, a lovely Clam bowl with sherry, garlic and tomatoes, or switch out mussels or squid for the clams. So, all those suggestions for substitutes add to an abundance of new recipes to try.

Besides the olive oil hollandaise dip I mention above, there are other nice dips and sauces: An easy cocktail dip, one made with peas and mint, or wasabi and lime mayo, or tartare sauce.

Plenty of how-to’s at the end of the book: How to buy fish, choose the right fish, different types of fish, how to prepare your fish. Depending on your experience, this chapter may or may not be of interest to you.

If you enjoy Mitch Tonks’ way with fish and seafood, I think you’ll like this book too. And you won’t get frustrated with Tonks’ mostly UK fish choices.

I received a temporary download of this book from the publisher.

This is a beautiful book and it has a variety of recipes. Many are simple and within the abilities of an average cook. However, I did find that some recipes required ingredients that would be difficult to obtain even though I live in a major city.

I love that this collection of recipes is for cooking with fish, or for excluding it completely. It is almost like two books in one. I love the way that eating meat is represented as something that you don't have to always do!

This is a wonderful book full of tasty looking recipes that offer the ultimate in adaptability (for me and my partner who are both pescetarian, anyway) - recipes that can involve fish but can be adapted not to, as well!

The recipes seemed to vary in difficulty - most looked really do-able but some did look more challenging. Then again, I really like a cookbook that has a good range of difficulty-levels, and this would no doubt suit anyone who enjoys cooking. Some recipes I would have happily left out, such as some of the salad recipes, but they're good for people who want something really simple and are just looking for inspiration to eat a little healthier. In fact, a lot of these recipes would be ideal for those trying to eat better, or just eat less meat.

I really liked the look of smoky mac 'n' cheese, the crab pasties, seafood scotch eggs, mackerel mushroom and miso broth, plus many others! I usually go through recipe books and mark all the good-sounding recipes and this one had loads I wanted to try! The photos are also really lovely - in fact the whole book is beautifully designed and would make a great gift for someone.