Mariner's Menu

Edited by Sarah Friday Peters / Photographs by Scott D. Taylor / Illustrations by Connie Mason

Since 1973, representatives from home extension clubs in Carteret County, North Carolina, have met each month in a Morehead City kitchen to test new ways of handling, storing, and preparing fish and shellfish caught off the North Carolina coast. Their thirty years of seafood wisdom are now gathered in this comprehensive cookbook and guide for cooks who want to know more than just how to bake or fry fish.

Mariner's Menu contains more than 160 original seafood recipes developed by the dedicated testers and tasters of the Seafood Lab kitchen. Many of these recipes, such as broiled tuna Provencal and steamed clams in wine broth, use easily available ingredients and require little preparation. Separate chapters instruct cooks on broiling, grilling, frying, and steaming. Important preparation techniques such as deboning fish, deveining shrimp, and cracking crab are illustrated in detailed drawings by Morehead City artist Connie Mason. Photographs by Scott D. Taylor of Beaufort reflect seafood's vital role in coastal communities.

Packed with images, safety tips, helpful hints, and mouth-watering recipes, Mariner's Menu is more than a cookbook. It's a complete resource for handling, storing, preparing, cooking, and enjoying fresh seafood.

Joyce Taylor is author of No-Salt Seafood and has been known as North Carolina's premiere seafood specialist since joining North Carolina Sea Grant in the mid-1970s. She lives in Morehead City. Sarah Friday Peters has been writing and editing in North Carolina for twenty years. She worked with Joyce Taylor at Sea Grant in the mid-1980s and now lives in Raleigh.