Reviews by Bob Walch

Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast (Sasquatch Books, 255 pages, $29.95), by Becky Selengut

If you’d like to do your part to help save threatened marine species while serving up some tantalizing delicious, sustainable seafood, this is the cookbook for you!

The 75 recipes in this beautifully illustrated volume are separated into three sections: shellfish; finfish; and littlefish and eggs. And there’s more than just recipes — you’ll also find helpful information on the seasons when the seafood is available, buying and storage tips, and questions you’ll want to ask the person selling the seafood.

Good Fish also answers many important questions about seafood. For example: What are the safety concerns when eating raw seafood? Which fish have the highest mercury levels? If these are questions you have when you are standing in front of the seafood counter at your local grocery store, then this is a book you’ll want to consult.

My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family and Togetherness (Grand Central Publishing, 271 pages, $30), by Gwyneth Paltrow

The fruit hasn’t fallen too far from the tree here as you’ll see when you peruse the 150 recipes this Academy Award-winning actress shares in this cookbook.

Paltrow began cooking with her father when she was 18 years old. “We decided to make a meal, and from there we got kind of obsessed,” she says. Speaking of her father’s love of cooking, she continues, “The most striking aspect of his cooking was how much joy he derived from feeding people that he loved.”

This compilation of favorite recipes includes a variety of soups, salads, pastas and sandwiches, but it also covers dishes for more formal occasions where a special main course, side dish or dessert would be appropriate. For easy use, the ingredients and instructions are limited to a single page with preparation times listed at the bottom of the page.

Some of the more unusual dishes that you might wish to try include fried zucchini spaghetti, chicken Milanese, crab cake burgers with spicy remoulade, vegetable paella, and salmon with ginger preserves and thyme.

Paltrow also shares quite a few personal stories and anecdotes about herself and her family but, honestly, the appeal this book has is really the recipes. The rest is just frosting on the cake!