Barton Seaver’s Two if by Sea: Delicious, Sustainable, Seafood highlights domestic seafood, seasonal cooking, and techniques of seafood cookery. For the seafood lover and aspiring seafood cook, this brings great seafood cooking home in easy to understand and executable recipes. Barton pairs simple cooking techniques with a vast knowledge of seafood for a fresh take on sustainable eating. The book seeks to reverse the order of operations in how we approach recipes and food shopping. Seaver encourages you go to the fish counter and buy the best quality seafood you can find (and afford), then choose from the beautifully photographed, easy-to-master techniques to fit that product and pair it with any of the book’s array of sides and accompaniments. This book is about helping the reader gain confidence in preparing and serving seafood at home.
An award winning Chef, Author, and Director of the Sustainable Seafood and Health Initiative at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Barton Seaver uses dinner as a means through which we can understand many things. This book may be read on simply an entertainment and culinary level, but to do so would miss the larger conversation. Two if by Sea and Barton’s work also represent a much broader and deeper story about the history, heritage and future of American fisheries and aquaculture as well as impacts on public health and the environment. He has gained deep knowledge of fisheries through his years as a chef, and time as an explorer with National Geographic and now living and working on the ragged coast of Maine. He tells the story of how fisheries and fish cookery represent culture and community. Seafood provides incredible opportunities and developing new economies, as we face challenging times in changing ecosystems. This is a particularly timely opportunity to speak about fisheries with the 40th Anniversary of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and its pending reauthorization. Seafood is more than a meal, it is a pillar of our economic health and environmental well-being.