Bookshelf: Fish Tales

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Bury your nose, whet your appetite

Fishing is a primal respite, a break from the noise of our daily lives and even from time itself, often evidenced only by the sun slowly passing overhead. But fishing is also about adventure, and anglers have long taken to the water stirring with anticipation of reeling in the big one.

The newest title from Susan Schadt Press chronicles that passion. Fusing cookbook with field guide, Reel Masters: Chefs Casting About with Timing and Grace joins eight chefs on fishing excursions with friends and family in the South’s bayous, bays, and backwaters. Along the way, catch a glimpse into their prized rituals and personal reflections on a lifetime of angling. There’s Donald Link, who takes his son fishing in Louisiana’s Toledo Bend Reservoir and shares the way his grandfather cooked fish—scaled, gutted and beheaded, dragged through cornmeal, and fried in a cast-iron skillet—“the only way,” Link says.

For John Besh, the waters across the state around Delacroix are as good as they come. “I vividly remember cane-pole fishing for bull croaker around these very bays and bayous I fish today with my children,” he says. “Those experiences of long ago instilled a love and respect for our marsh and the foodways it gives birth to.” Chefs Jeremiah Bacon, Walter Bundy, John Currence, Kelly English, Chris Hastings, and Kevin Willmann also wax on angling in this coffee table tome.

The Essential Oyster

Bloomsbury, 2016

From brackish bayous to the shores of the South Atlantic, oysters are flavored with the essence of their environment. In his latest release, bivalve buff Rowan Jacobsen documents nearly one hundred varieties through tasting notes, obtainability, and history (take Chincoteague Salts, which were popularized in the Mid-Atlantic and Europe after the Civil War when Virginians reduced to poverty turned to a new life in oystering).

The S.N.O.B Experience

Advantage Media, 2016

If you’ve been to Charleston, South Carolina, odds are you’ve been to S.N.O.B.—or you’ve at least heard of the downtown institution. Open since 1993, chef Frank Lee crafts Lowcountry plates that keep locals and visitors alike coming back. This book is an ode to the restaurant, with stories from its regulars and recipes for some of its most coveted dishes.