Cod

This brothy chowder is loosely inspired by bouillabaisse, the classic Provençal seafood soup, but it’s both simpler and easier on the pocketbook. To go all the way with this dish, drizzle the soup with fresh aioli (or mix mayonnaise with minced fresh garlic and thin with lemon juice). Serve with crusty bread.

Steamed fish is a healthful and quick-cooking dinner option. Adding a few aromatics to the steaming liquid enhances the taste of the fish without using any butter or oil. Haddock, halibut, or other firm-fleshed white fish can be used in place of the cod.

THE DELICATE FLAVORS OF COD shine when the fish is cooked in a light and flavorful broth. Served chilled, it is perfect for a warm summer evening. When the cod is served with a grain or plain steamed rice, the vinaigrette becomes the sauce.

CIOPPINO, THE CLASSIC ITALIAN-AMERICAN FISH STEW for which San Francisco is famous, takes on a new life in the Northwest, with fennel and a hint of anchovy to boost the flavor. The mashed avocado is used as a thickener and adds a richness to the dish, but it’s optional. We use a variety of seafood, but feel free to use whatever is fresh in your fish market. We like to use true cod, also known as Pacific cod, because of its flaky texture and mild flavor. (Pacific cod is preferable to Atlantic cod, an overfished species.) True cod is often available frozen. If you find it fresh ask your fishmonger to bone it for you.

GOOD TO KNOW Cod and other lean, firm-fleshed fish are good choices for steaming, since they stay moist after cooking. To steam in the oven, combine fillets in a baking dish with rice vinegar (or another flavorful liquid, such as lemon juice or wine), oil, and aromatics, then cover the dish tightly to trap in moisture as the fish cooks.

WHY IT’S LIGHT For a shore dinner you can make anywhere, wrap shrimp, cod, pototoes, and corn in “hobo packs” and cook them on the grill. The food steams inside, with only a half tablespoon butter per serving.

WHY IT’S LIGHT This dish only sounds indulgent. It stays trim by combining a modest piece of bacon-wrapped fish with a generous salad. Thick fillets of any firm, flaky, and mild fish, such as halibut, haddock, or striped bass, would work well here.

FLAVOR BOOSTER A potent spice blend is sprinkled over the fish before it is steamed atop rice, making up for any lack of crust the fish might get from pan-searing in butter or oil. The same mixture could also be rubbed over chicken or pork tenderloin before roasting or grilling.

This is a light, healthful Mediterranean-inspired dish that is super-easy to make and can be on the table in 20 minutes—great for a weeknight dinner for two. If you have a crowd (or a big family like mine), go ahead and adjust the recipe accordingly. A note about anchovies, which I think get a bad rap: They are actually a wonderful way to add salt to a dish or sauce and are very popular in some Baja dishes (like the world-renowned Caesar Salad). Fresh anchovies have a gentler flavor than those packaged in a tin, but either will work here.

Fish breathes new life into the “sandwich” of Mexico and the Southwest, replacing mystery meat with an identifiable fillet of delicate white fish like cod to make fish tacos, a rarity on the East Coast. Instead of frying, as is common in tacquerias, I like to steam the fish in its own juices, which can be done on top of the stove or in a microwave oven (in fact, this is one of the few cooking tasks at which the microwave excels).

Between your favorite crab cake and a box of frozen fish sticks lies a world of crisp, easily produced fish cakes that make for great weeknight eating. In addition to fish, they all have two elements in common: something to “bind” the cake as it cooks and a fair amount of seasoning. My favorite way to hold fish cakes together is to mix the flaked meat with mashed potatoes, about three parts fish to one part potato. If you begin with a mild fish, like cod, the flavorings can be as adventuresome as you like. My preferred combination is a hefty dose of ginger and cilantro, spiked with a bit of hot red chile. The result is a zingy cake that needs nothing more than a squeeze of lime.

An Andalusian dish with a sweet, aromatic sauce. Do not use canned chickpeas here.

Once, for a special occasion, I produced potatoes Anna—a dish in which potatoes are thinly sliced, drenched in butter, and roasted until golden, the ultimate in crisp potato dishes—for my daughter Emma. This was a fatal error, because potatoes Anna are a pain to make, contain about a week’s allotment of butter, and were forever in demand thereafter. So I set about shortcutting the process, creating something approaching an entire meal. I cut back on the butter (when attacks of conscience strike, I substitute olive oil) and enlisted the broiler to speed the browning process. I figured that it would be just as easy to broil something on top of the potatoes during the last few minutes of cooking and, after a few tries, I found a thick fillet of fish to be ideal. The result is this simple weeknight dish that I now make routinely and one that even impresses guests.

This is a dish that is almost too simple to believe, one that combines wonderful textures and flavors with a minimum of ingredients, no added fat, and almost no preparation or cooking time. Like the best minimalist dishes, everything counts here: the fish, the leeks—which remain crisp and assertive thanks to the quick cooking time—and even the wine or stock. The Dijon mustard provides a bit of a kick. You need a tightly covered container to preserve all the liquid and flavors inherent in this dish, but that can be as simple as a pot with a good-fitting lid or a heatproof glass casserole—anything that prevents moisture from escaping.

This is a simple marriage of butter, shallots, and mushrooms, splashed in a dose of hard cider (the dry, sparkling kind from France or England, sold nearly everywhere you can buy beer and wine) and used to poach fish in a hot oven. The fish may be haddock, cod, monkfish, halibut, red snapper, or any other white-fleshed fish. The cider provides a distinctively sour fruitiness, not at all like white wine, and the completed dish has complementary textures: crunchy shallots, meaty mushrooms (portobellos are good here), and tender fish.

This is one of those recipes in which the shopping may take you longer than the cooking, because fennel stalks—or those from dill, which are nearly as good—are often discarded by grocers. When you buy a bulb of fennel, you’re buying the bottom, trimmed of its long stalks; when you buy a bunch of dill, you’re buying the feathery tops, trimmed of the stalks that support them. Because this recipe requires some of those stalks, you will probably have to speak directly to a produce manager, visit a farmstand or a friend’s garden, or simply get lucky. The technique of grilling fish on top of fennel or dill stalks solves a couple of problems at once: it seasons the fish subtly and without effort, and it helps prevent the fish from sticking to the grill and falling apart. In fact, this method allows you to grill even relatively delicate fillets like cod, usually one of the most challenging fishes to grill because of its tendency to fall apart as it nears doneness.

If you have forgotten how delicious a fillet of fish can be, do this: Steam it, with nothing. Drizzle it with olive oil and lemon. Sprinkle it with salt. Eat it. If the number of ingredients and technique are minimal, the challenge is not. You need a high-quality and uniformly thick piece of fish to begin with, your timing must be precise—which is all a matter of attention and judgment, really—and your olive oil flavorful. That taken care of, there is no better or easier preparation.

Bouillabaisse, the Mediterranean fish stew that is more difficult to spell than to prepare, is traditionally neither an idée fixe nor the centerpiece of a grand bouffe, but a spur-of-the-moment combination of the day’s catch. The key to bouillabaisse is a variety of good fish of different types, so use this recipe as a set of guidelines rather than strict dogma and don’t worry about duplicating the exact types or quantities of fish.

A choucroute need not be meat, as is the more familiar one on page 404. Alsace, where the dish originated, has a long tradition of combining sauerkraut with fish. As is always the case, buy sauerkraut that is either sold in bulk or packed in plastic and contains no more than cabbage and salt. Serve with boiled potatoes.

Rémoulade is an all-purpose fish sauce, a super spicy, chunky variation on mayonnaise and perhaps the Platonic ideal of tartar sauce. You can use it with poached, baked, fried, even leftover fish, but I think it’s best with grilled fish. Swordfish is the most obvious candidate, but you can grill steaks of cod, mahimahi, mako, salmon, or tuna and serve them with rémoulade; monkfish is also good. This combination is pretty rich; I’d be satisfied with a decent bread and a salad or steamed vegetable dressed with no more than lemon juice.