A beautiful addition to the flexitarian cookbook scene. Full of simple yet delicious recipes and wonderful food photography, I can see myself using this book time and time again. It's lovely to flick through and imagine yourself serving up all the dishes...ideal!

If you're a fish lover and there are others in your family who don't think the same way, this is the book for you. The recipes are easy to follow but come with hints on how to change the recipe to accommodate a vegetarian or meat eater. Brilliant idea! A must for pescatarians who need to cater to others.

Yep Yep Yum!!

Great cookbook for those that love food. Not necessary to love fish because this recipes can be done with or without I highly recommend picking up if you're looking to add tremendous flavor to your cooking.

If you cook for others as well as yourself, they will not be disappointed.

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.

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 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.

This is an amazing cookbook - there are recipes and tips for beginners but one could also find complex recipes and amazing recipes with fish and seafood.

My favourite part though was the photography! They are gorgeous and inspiring! I want to cook all the fish now, even though I am terrified of cooking fish!

This gorgeous cookbook made me want to run immediately to the local fish market. It's filled with breathtaking photos, which highlight the dishes through the use of simple, cool-toned backgrounds. The recipes are clear and include flexible options for preparing as vegetarian dishes. The section at the end on how to buy and prepare fish is incredibly helpful.

This cookbook is going on my wish list for sure!

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 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

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.

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.