Bart Van Olphen is a Dutch chef who’s spent some 15 years championing sustainable seafood, visiting fishing communities around the world and sharing new ways to prepare various species in cookbooks, on television, and on Instagram. He co-founded Sea Tales, a fish brand with lines of both fresh and “sustainably canned” seafood, and authored “The Tinned Fish Cookbook” released in the U.S. last year.
Lately, he’s been giving the vegetables he’d long relegated to the sidelines more prominent roles on his plates — partly for their health benefits, but also because his travels have opened his mind to plant-based culinary possibilities he hadn’t considered.
That doesn’t mean his passion for fish has diminished. In writing “Veggies and Fish: Inspired New Recipes for Plant-Forward Pescatarian Cooking” (The Experiment, $24.95), he sets out to show how the textures and flavors of the garden and sea can complement one another in a single dish.
He begins with run-downs of his favorite vegetables to pair with seafood, and introduces us to edible seaweeds and sea vegetables such as sea spaghetti and marsh samphire. He also gives tips for choosing responsibly caught fish in plentiful supply, and encourages embracing high-quality frozen and canned seafood when sustainable fresh options are scarce. Focusing meals on plant-based ingredients, he notes, allows us to appreciate the ocean’s riches without overconsuming.
Recipes are mostly organized by technique — in chapters such as salads, curries and stews, and barbecue — with flavors that span the globe: Cucumber and Fennel Salad with Gin and Tonic Salmon; Puff Pastry Pizza with Tuna Tapenade, Artichoke, and Chard; Miso Ramen with Vegetables and Scallops.
Pesce in Saor is a riff on a classic Venetian dish that pairs sardines with slow-braised onions punctuated with raisins and pine nuts. But any fish, Van Olphen writes, will work. He fortifies that mound of meltingly tender sweet-and-sour onions with zucchini and Israeli couscous, and tops it with skin-on sea-bass fillets, cut in modest 3-ounce portions and skillet-fried until crisp.
I tried it using salmon, and it scored on multiple counts: delicious, filling, economical and healthy — for me and the sea.
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
Read more stories like this by liking Atlanta Restaurant Scene on Facebook, following @ATLDiningNews on Twitter and @ajcdining on Instagram.
About the Author
