Flounder

Here Dijon mustard serves a dual purpose: It flavors the delicate fish, and helps the bread-crumb coating stay in place as the fish cooks. Tilapia can be used in place of flounder.

GOOD TO KNOW A favorite sandwich, redux: Instead of battering and deep-frying, fish fillets are cooked on the grill, with a mere brush of oil. Top with a tangy slaw and serve on toasted bread, and you won’t miss the original in the least.

FLAVOR BOOSTER Everyone knows steamed fish is healthy—the trick lies in making it flavorful, too. Here, flounder fillets are spread with Dijon, rolled up, and cooked atop a bed of couscous and vegetables. A drizzle of vinaigrette provides the finishing touch.

Thin fish fillet can be tricky to prepare, mostly because they fall apart the instant they’re overcooked. But the fact that quarter-inch-thick fillets of flounder, sole, and other flatfish take so little time to cook can be an advantage. By poaching them in barely hot liquid, you slow the cooking and gain control. By flavoring the liquid first with a quick-cooking aromatic vegetable, you create a dish that needs only bread or rice to become a meal. Unlike with broiling or sautéing, the fish never dries out. The traditional liquid for poaching fish is court bouillon, a stock made from scratch using fish bones, onions, carrots, and celery enhanced with white wine and herbs. Assuming you don’t have any court bouillon on hand—and who does?—my poaching liquid of choice is chicken stock, and the canned variety is fine, because you’re going to add flavor to it, and quickly, in the form of leeks and fish.

Limes and hot weather go together; I first had this at a three-walled restaurant in a Yucatán port on the Gulf of Mexico. I loved it immediately, and I love it still. It works just as well with shrimp as it does with flatfish. As for the chiles, the amount is your call. I like just a touch of heat—a pinch of cayenne does the trick for me—but this dish is often prepared scorchingly hot. Serve with rice (Mexican Rice, page 517, is good), or tortillas.

This is an ultraquick recipe, lightly sweet, and one that will work for any white fillet—even thick ones if you extend the cooking time slightly. I prefer very thin ones, though, because the sauce almost permeates them and the cooking time is so short. The soy glaze makes this a natural over white rice.

Mama always loved to order this dish when we went to the beach. But many cooks now avoid serving it since the harvesting methods are not considered ecologically friendly. In many instances, the fish are caught using a trawling method. Imagine a bulldozer scraping along the ocean floor, indiscriminately catching intended as well as unintended species. Even though flounder also suffers from overfishing (it seems too many people appreciate one of the best fish in the Gulf): I am calling for flounder here for old times’ sake. But you can substitute flat fish like English or Dover sole and turbot, which get better ecological marks and whose flavors are similar to that of flounder.

The first time I presented this recipe to my children, then four and two, my older son threw a fit, said it looked “disgusting,” and refused to eat it. I calmly reminded him of our rule for new (or forgotten!) foods: You must eat three bites of each item and then if you still don’t like anything on the plate you can have something else. Within minutes they both had polished off full plates and asked for seconds! Garlic is a favorite flavor for my kids, and when the whole garlic cloves come into contact with the spray of oil, they take on a mellow, sautéed taste. Try a less “fishy” fish for unenthusiastic fish eaters; consider sole, flounder, or tilapia.

Not quite a soup, New England fish chowder is known for its succulent large chunks of seafood and vegetables coated in a thin, milky broth. Traditionally this is made with cod; however, tilapia, flounder, or any other white fish will work fine. You can even use fillets directly from the freezer without defrosting them first. The fish will break into pieces as it cooks, or you can break it up while serving. Add any type of fresh or frozen seafood, such as crab or shrimp, or eight ounces of corn kernels for an even heartier meal. The type of milk used will affect how thick the broth is. Choose skim, 2 percent, whole, soy, rice, almond, or even heavy cream to suit your preference. To quickly remove the stems of chard (and other leafy greens like kale), hold the sides of the leaves together in one hand and use the other to rip the stem from the bottom of the leaf. Chard stems can be bitter. By chopping the stems finely and placing them on the bottom of the pot, they will have the opportunity to brown slightly and lose most of their bitterness.

While in the port town of Fécamp in Normandy, France, I stopped for lunch at a tiny hotel-restaurant that had no more than four tables and was run by a husband-and-wife team who apparently did everything from the cooking to serving to making the beds themselves. The catch of the day was Dover sole and the chef served it lightly pan-fried and practically swimming in a bath of the most wonderful lemon-butter sauce I’d ever tasted. The Dover sole sold in Europe is a delicate flat fish native to European waters, including the English Channel on which the town of Fécamp sits. When I’m in the United States, I use Pacific Dover sole or another delicately flavored, fresh, flat fish from waters closer to home. This dish is excellent served with Broiled Asparagus (page 145).

Breaded fish is one of our favorites. The richness of pine nuts nicely balances the lemon and herbs to make an irresistible dish. Use just about any fish: flounder, salmon, tilapia, perch, cod, snapper, catfish.

This is one of the fastest yet most delectable fish preparations. Flounder is a delicate fish, so you need to use care (a wide spatula helps) when turning it to cook on the second side.

In Italy, this dish would be prepared with rombo (turbot), but flounder is certainly an excellent substitute. Flounder is a flakier fish and will cook quicker, so either cut the potatoes into slightly thinner wedges, or boil them a minute or two longer. The flounder you choose for this dish should be a thick one. The dark skin is removed while the white is left on the bottom so the fish does not fall apart when it is being served.

This meal is a combo of two favorite preparations: francese and piccata. Francese are egg-battered cutlets or fillets, and piccata are simply flour-dredged or plain cutlets or fillets sautéed with lemon and wine. I was never good at making decisions, especially regarding dinner, so I made up this two-for-one dinner. Serve with wilted fresh spinach or green salad.

In Bangladesh, the basic diet is fish and rice. It is not fish from the Bay of Bengal, the sea that rules their shores, that the people thrive on. In fact, they hardly touch that. What they love is the sweet-water fish that comes from their estuaries, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Since local Bangladeshi fish are unavailable to most of us, I have adapted this recipe to fillet of flounder. One of the common local seasonings is an aromatic lime leaf very similar to the kaffir lime leaf of Thailand. If you cannot get that, use fresh curry leaves, or, failing that, fresh basil leaves. Serve with plain rice, a dal, and a vegetable or salad.

This is a fast and easy method for preparing firm, thick fish fillets. A heavy skillet with a ridged bottom will produce nice grill marks when preheated in the oven. Serve this fish with stir-fried Asian noodles or spaghetti tossed with sautéed bok choy, green onions, and any type of sprouts, seasoned with minced garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, and sesame oil.

Making a parchment envelope in which to steam a fillet of fish surrounded by aromatic vegetables may sound a bit fancy for just one, but cooking in parchment is actually one of the simplest and most effective ways of steaming, because it seals in the flavors. What a treat it is to have that golden-tinged, puffed-up half-moon of parchment on your plate, and then to tear it open and breathe in all the heady aromas. Moreover, you’ll have no cleanup afterward; just wipe off the Silpat mat and throw away the parchment after you’ve scraped and scooped up every last delicious morsel and its jus. If you want just one meal out of this, get about a 6-ounce fillet of flounder, halibut, salmon, red snapper—whatever looks good. Or, as I did recently, try tilapia, which is quite readily available these days and at a reasonable price. But bought almost twice the amount I needed, so I could play with the other half of the cooked fillet a couple of days later. I learned from Katy Sparks, whose book, Sparks in the Kitchen, is full of great cooking tips from a chef to the home cook, the trick of pre-roasting several slices of new potato so they can go in the parchment package. This way you have a complete, balanced meal-in-one cooked all together.

Some dishes are best when they are as plain and simple as possible. Whole fish fried in butter and served with lemon and parsley potatoes: That is simple and tasty!

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are adapted from Elizabeth Karmel's Web site, girlsatthegrill.com . I use this technique to grill one of my signature dishes, pancetta-wrapped trout. I stuff the fish with fresh tarragon, wrap it mummy-style in pancetta (uncured Italian bacon) and serve it with a simple mesclun salad for a winning meal off the grill.

This Baja treat is well known to residents of Southern California, where fish tacos have been popular since their introduction in the 1980s. The crunch of coleslaw contrasts with tender fish, and the creamy dressing is spiked with the smoky heat of chipotle chiles.

The turbot is roasted on a thin cake of overlapping potato slices and then sauced with a simple pan sauce, garnished with tomatoes and black olives. Turbot is rarely available in the United States, but another flatfish such as a fluke or flounder makes a good substitute. You will need a mandoline or other vegetable slicer to slide the potatoes very thin. Ovenproof nonstick frying pans work best here, so the potato cakes don't stick, but if necessary you can use other 8-inch frying pans or cake pans; line them with rounds of parchment paper.