Seafood & Fish
2025 recipes found

Spaghetti Squash With Oyster-Mushroom-and-Pearl-Onion Ragout

Farro Niçoise
There is one mistake many of us make, cooking grain salads: we play down everything but the grains. A pile of cold brown rice with a few chopped vegetables and some soy sauce or a mound of wheat berries with vinaigrette is about as one-dimensional as it gets. This niçoise salad turns that problem on its head, with tuna used in a powerful vinaigrette tossed with farro. Farro is interesting because it’s relatively fast-cooking for a whole grain, but any hearty grain could take its place: one of the many “brown” rices, spelt, kamut, wheat. Whichever you use, the results are nutty and sublime.

Chirashi (Scattered) Sushi

Patra Ni Machhi
This recipe is adapted from a version found in "My Bombay Kitchen," Niloufer Ichaporia King’s indispensable book on Parsi cooking. Ichaporia King, a culinary scholar, anthropologist and terrific home cook, recommends steaming the fish, but the soft lap of wood smoke is a natural complement to the sweet, floral flavor the banana leaf imparts. Look for fresh or frozen banana leaves and coconut at Mexican, Asian and Indian markets. As Ichaporia King says, “It does represent some effort to find the banana leaves, but it’s worth it.” If you can’t find banana leaves, you can use fig leaves (shiny side-up) or pieces of aluminum foil lined with parchment paper. And if you don’t have access to a grill, you can roast the fish parcels on a baking sheet in an oven preheated to 450 degrees for about 8 minutes until done.

Miso-Glazed Sea Bass
Fish baked in miso is quintessentially Japanese, but I first learned about it years ago from the very American James Beard. Miso marries well with oily fish like salmon, mackerel or black cod, but mild firm-fleshed fish like sea bass or halibut also make fine candidates. Simply coat fish fillets or steaks with a mixture of miso, sake, mirin and a little ginger. An egg yolk may be added to help burnish and glaze the fish under the broiler. Serve with a pile of wilted greens dabbed with sesame oil.

Microwaved Black Cod With Scallions and Ginger

‘Instant’ Kimchi With Greens and Bean Sprouts
Instant kimchi requires no fermentation and is ready to use as soon as it is seasoned. It makes a fresh salad-like accompaniment for meat or fish dishes, whether Korean or western.

Striped Bass with Fresh Figs
This recipe is inspired by a dish served at a pinot noir dinner at Bar Boulud, one of the chef Daniel Boulud’s restaurants. There, a whole wild striped bass was swaddled in fresh fig leaves and stuffed with fresh black figs in a red wine sauce. The brooding sauce bathed velvet figs, and its earthy depths made the already succulent fish a fine partner for some excellent bottles of red. My version, which uses fillets and omits fig leaves, is about as delicious as I remembered and much easier than I expected.

Frutti di Mare Rice Salad
In the southern Mediterranean, savory rice salads are popular and are great for a light summer lunch or supper. The rice is first boiled in well-salted water like pasta and dressed with a zesty vinaigrette. This version is topped with a pile of briefly cooked shrimp, calamari and mussels, and summery ingredients like cherry tomatoes, green beans and basil. The salad is served at room temperature, and most of it can be prepared in advance, so it is exactly what you want when the weather is sweltering.

Italian-Style Fish Stew
This is a simple Italianate fish stew, with classic Mediterranean flavors. It’s easy to put together and everything can be prepped ahead. Just pop it the oven 30 minutes before dinner.

Lemon-Grass-Ginger Soup With Mushrooms

Outdoor Fish Fry
Frying fish at home can be intimidating, not least because it’s messy and can leave the house smelling like a grease pit. Here, though, is a recipe that takes the cooking outside, to a large pan set over a propane hob or, as subsequent testing has borne out, to a large roasting pan filled with oil set over a gas grill. Simply heat the oil until it is very hot but not yet smoking, and add to it very fresh strips of fish dipped in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper and Old Bay, then into egg, and finally into panko, and fry until golden brown on each side, super-crisp, with a moist, tender and perfectly cooked interior. Buy a lot of fish. This is one of those recipes where people tend to want seconds and thirds. Serve with slaw and, if you like, tartar sauce.

Baja Ceviche

Shad Fillets With Red Pepper And Saffron Sauce

Salmon, Arugula And Avocado Maki

Cauliflower With Oyster Mushrooms and Sherry
This dish of cauliflower and oyster mushrooms in sherry and cream is pan-simmered, though the cauliflower is blanched beforehand in highly salted water to keep it crisp. The addition of sherry to the cream sauce keeps it from being bland, and the mushrooms are seared for a bit of chew.

Ara Yaki
What’s ara yaki? The best scraps of fish left after it has been filleted for sashimi, quickly broiled and roasted, with nothing but salt. You can get it at Seki, an unassuming izakaya in Washington, or you can make it yourself; the key is in the shopping. The beauty of the dish lies in its simplicity: These golden bits of fish are exceptionally delicious, and fun to eat with chopsticks or fingers.

Hot and Sour Soup with Shrimp (Tom Yum Goong)

Family-Meal Fish Tacos
This is a fast, satisfying fish dinner with Cajun flavors. Chad Shaner cooked it for staff meals when he was a line cook at Union Square Cafe in Manhattan. It was, he said shyly when The Times talked to him in 2013, one of the restaurant staff's favorites. “Everyone loves taco day,” he said. The recipe is not particularly Mexican. Shaner hails from Smyrna, Del., and served in the Navy before he went to cooking school. He makes a forceful kind of American food that borrows its flavors from wherever they are strongest. His fish tacos, he said, are something he cooked up one night with his brother, Andy, a bartender. “We were looking for intense flavor,” he said of the Cajun-style rub they used on the fish.

Salmon Fillets With Red Butter Sauce

Miyeok Guk (Seaweed Soup)
People eat miyeok guk on birthdays to celebrate not just their own birth, but their mother’s sacrifice as well — which is why it is often known as birthday soup. This miyeok guk (ME-yuhk gewk) forgoes the more common beef broth for mussels and an aromatic base of onion, garlic and anchovies. Though not traditional, the addition of parsnip, for sweetness and umami, yields a broth with body, like the kind you would get with the usual brisket. Scooped out of their shells, mussels become little morsels in the soup, nuggets of briny joy.

Shrimp And Roasted Peppers

Swordfish With Couscous Salad

Fried Fish With Vodka-and-Beer Batter
Heston Blumenthal, the chef at the Fat Duck near London, updated classic British fish and chips in his book "In Search of Perfection" (Bloomsbury, 2006), using a batter that includes beer and vodka. The alcohol dissolves some of the gluten proteins in the wheat flour, so the crust doesn’t get tough and boils off faster than water, so the batter dries out, crisps and browns quickly, before the delicate fish inside overcooks. The coating ends up especially crunchy — with each bite, you crush many thin layers of crust.