Seafood & Fish
2025 recipes found
Tuna Melt
Legend has it that the tuna melt was accidentally invented in the 1960s at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Charleston, S.C., when the cook didn’t notice that a bowl of tuna salad had tipped over onto a grilled cheese. We may never know if this story is true, but there’s no doubt that the tuna melt has become a classic American diner food. This recipe adds chopped cornichons and whole-grain mustard for a satisfying crunch and vinegary element. Extra-sharp Cheddar is a must, and as with grilled cheese, the key to achieving perfectly melted cheese and golden bread is to toast the sandwich over medium-low heat. If you prefer an open-face tuna melt, skip the top piece of bread and place the sandwich on a sheet pan under the broiler until the cheese melts.
Glazed Cod With Bok Choy, Ginger and Oyster Sauce
This quick one-skillet meal gets a boost of flavor from oyster sauce, a salty-sweet condiment made from concentrated oyster juice and soy sauce that’s often used in Chinese cooking. Here, it melds with garlic, ginger and butter to create a velvety glaze for cod fillets. If cod is unavailable, hake, striped bass or even salmon are fine substitutes. Steamed rice, soba or egg noodles are all perfect canvases for soaking up the flavorful juices.
Classic Cocktail Sauce
A combination of pungent horseradish and sweet ketchup make up the foundation of this classic cocktail sauce, which is seasoned with lemon juice, hot sauce and a dash of Worcestershire. Drizzle it on a shrimp cocktail or dab it sparingly on raw seafood. A little of this assertive mixture goes a long way.
Herb-Marinated Swordfish
Swordfish steaks are meaty in texture yet delicate in flavor and best when cooked to medium, so that the flesh is firm but still juicy. (Like many proteins, it can get tough if overcooked.) Rather than marinating in advance, here the fish is marinated after cooking: Cooked in a skillet until golden, the steaks are then left to soak up a piquant pan sauce while warm. The sauce imparts the punchy flavors of briny capers and citrus, while the olive oil keeps the steaks moist. Serve with a simple salad or with crusty bread for sopping up the juices.
Baked Tilapia
Tilapia has a flaky texture and a sweet, mild taste, so it welcomes assertive seasonings. This baked, sheet-pan recipe coats the fish with butter, lemon, garlic and parsley, but feel free to switch up the flavor as you like; paprika, Old Bay, ginger, lime and tarragon would all be great. Keep in mind that there are environmental issues around tilapia farming, so use resources such as Seafood Watch when selecting fish. This recipe also works with trout, flounder or other thin filets.
Lobster and Avocado Salad
This recipe, from Craig Claiborne with Pierre Franey, brings together two scrumptious delights, the lobster and the avocado. The creaminess of the avocado complements the sweetness of the lobster. The combination is perfect for a light summer supper or lunch. It’s great for a special occasion, but can also be a treat just for you.
Steamed Whole Fish With Ginger and Sesame
Steaming a whole fish is an excellent, and speedy, way to cook. The fish here, dabbed with ginger and a few other aromatics, is transformed by the process, and delivers a sweet, near-melting succulence. The pan juices are the only sauce necessary. A traditional bamboo steamer is great to have, but any sizable steamer will work, or you can rig up a steamer using a large pot. Make sure that the makeshift rack sits an inch or so above the boiling water, and that the pot has a lid.
Cauliflower and Tuna Salad
I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.
Cold Rice Noodles With Coconut Milk, Peanuts and Lime
In this breezy recipe, rice noodles are tossed in a creamy-yet-light mix of coconut milk, fish sauce and lime, then garnished with plenty of salty peanuts, chile, lime zest and cilantro. Don’t bother picking the cilantro leaves from the stems; just chop the whole plant until you hit a firm, white stem. The green stems add crunch, and they pack more concentrated flavor than the leaves. Feel free to add whatever fridge stragglers or greenmarket celebrities that look good to you, such as thinly sliced vegetables, poached shrimp, pan-fried tofu, grilled chicken or pork. Because this salad teeters from savory to sweet, even pineapple, green apple or mango would do.
Noodle Bowl With Mushrooms, Spinach and Salmon
I love spinach, barely cooked, in a noodle bowl. Use either bunch spinach from the farmers’ market or baby spinach for this one.
Roasted Red Pepper Filled With Tuna
This recipe is an adaptation of a classic Provençal dish. A roasted red pepper filled with a flavorful combination of canned tuna, capers, anchovy and lemon juice makes a satisfying and healthy meal for one.
Simplest Steamed Fish
If you have forgotten how delicious a great fillet of fish can be, try this: Steam it, with nothing on it. Drizzle it with olive oil and lemon juice. Sprinkle it with coarse salt. Eat.
Tricolor Salad Alla Splendido
An Italian restaurant standard is kicked up a few notches in this recipe from Mario Carbone, the chef at Carbone restaurant in New York. If you find it hard to track down Italian frisée or various types of radicchio, you can substitute the usual trio of arugula, endive and radicchio. A helping of poached tuna adds richness and a hint of a salade niçiose.
Pasta With Tuna and Olives
If you want to make a complete meal of this, you can add a green vegetable to the mix (see the variation below). I like to use fusilli because I like the way the tuna gets lodged in the twists of the corkscrews, but other types of pasta, such as penne or spaghetti, will be just fine.
Tuna With Capers, Olives and Lemon
This is not your mother's mayonnaise-laden tuna salad, but it's just as easy to prepare. Here's what you do: stir together some canned tuna, garlic, lemon juice, red onion, black olives, capers and fresh parsley, then spread it on buttered toast. Top it off with a round of ripe tomato or slivers of avocado and another slice of toast. That's it. If you want to make it into a dip, toss the mixture into a food processor with a few tablespoons of softened butter and a bit more olive oil. Purée until smooth and creamy and serve with carrots, fennel, bell pepper and seeded crackers. If you have a tin of sardines taunting you from inside your cabinet, we bet this recipe would work equally well with those.
Fish Soup With Fennel and Pernod
This recipe was designed for new parents, who must cook stealthily to keep from waking an infant. The silent chef must follow a few simple, yet unforgiving rules: any busy, attention-demanding work has to happen before baby's bedtime; recipes must easily tolerate a lengthy span between prep and finish, ideally resting at room temperature to lessen the mess and effort involved in refrigerating and reheating; and the final steps, after baby's bedtime, have to be both quiet and fairly routine.
Sous-Chef Salad
Following the model of a classic French salade composée, this satisfying salad, packed with cooked and raw vegetables, as well as canned best-quality tuna and hard-boiled eggs, presents beautifully and eats like a meal. It builds upon a traditional salade niçoise, but a true niçoise uses no lettuce, often has anchovies, would want cracked black niçoise olives and would not have artichoke hearts and basil. So let’s call this a sous-chef salad — and dodge the whole argument while picking up another: It is definitely the best meal salad you will eat all summer. Take care to arrange it so there’s some of each component wherever your eye lands. Try to nestle and fluff the ingredients to allow them all to be seen, rather than piling layer atop layer and thus obscuring the beauty of everything below. This makes the salad very attractive and, most important, ensures that everyone gets some of everything in each bite.
Shrimp Fajitas With Peppers and Zucchini
Shrimp fajitas are quickly thrown together. The shrimp are tossed in a mix of lime juice and zest, adobo sauce from a can of chipotles, olive oil, cumin and garlic, and don’t need to be marinated for longer than 30 minutes. I use just enough adobo sauce in the marinade to obtain its spicy and slightly sweet essence without overpowering the shrimp.
Tuna-Salad Sandwich, Julia Child Style
This was one of Julia Child’s favorite dishes for a working lunch. For decades, Julia was on the road more than she was home and, when she returned to her beloved kitchen, she craved simple foods. For Julia, the important ingredients for this sandwich were the tuna (it had to be packed in oil) and the mayo (she preferred Hellmann’s). Her longtime assistant, Stephanie Hersh, said, “The rest was up for grabs.” Make it with capers, cornichons and chopped onion, a squirt of lemon juice and some herbs, serve it open-face on an English muffin or between slices of white bread, and you’ll have Julia’s midday signature.
Salmon in Parsley Sauce
Parsley is the herb taken for granted. A few sprigs solve the garnish problem. A scattering of chopped leaves enlivens almost any dish with a bright bit of green. But parsley can take a more assertive role, becoming the primary component of a sauce. Here, flat-leaf parsley is combined with capers, scallions and garlic to make a sharp, verdant sauce for salmon. It contrasts perfectly with the richness of the fish.
Mediterranean Fish Chowder With Potatoes and Kale
This brothy fish stew gets extra body and heft from the kale and potatoes, and a hint of the Mediterranean from thyme, parsley and bay leaf. The method is straightforward. First make a mirepoix of onion, celery and carrot. Add garlic, anchovies and parsley, followed by the tomatoes and paste, and finally the potatoes and bouquet garni. Simmer for 30 minutes while the kale is cooked separately, then add the fish. Take care not to overcook the fish — it’s done as soon as it flakes easily when you nudge it with a fork.
Roasted Salmon With Ginger-Lime Butter
Wild Pacific salmon is available in spring and summer, and the flavor is phenomenal. It definitely tastes better than farmed salmon and is always a better choice, sustainably speaking. Though it is expensive, think of it as a seasonal treat. Whether you choose wild king salmon, coho or sockeye, take care not to overcook it.
Red Cabbage, Cilantro and Walnut Salad
This slaw, a mix of very thinly shredded red cabbage, cilantro, julienned radishes and walnuts, is a perfect sweet-nutty-salty-sour mix. Pair it with dumplings, or other dim sum, and it holds its own.
XO Sauce
In Hong Kong in the 1980s, when expensive Cognac was all the rage, legend has it that some smart cook at the Spring Moon restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel on Kowloon got it into his head to name the funky new condiment he’d come up with after the status mark on the bottle of Remy Martin at the bar: “XO,” extra old, rare, very expensive. The stuff was a hit: dried scallops and dried shrimp, a ton of chiles, a faint pork-smokiness and a whisper of allium, expensive to make and worth it for the flavor-enhancing pop. By the end of the decade, XO sauce was on menus all over Hong Kong and eventually the world. Recipes for XO vary wildly, save for those scallops and shrimp. Mine derives from the teachings of Diana Kuan, who included a formidable XO in her 2019 cookbook, “Red Hot Kitchen.”