Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking is a book that simplifies, once and for all, the process of preparing fish. Organized in an easy-reference, A-Z format, Fish gives you the culinary lowdown on seventy kinds of fish and shellfish commonly found in American supermarkets and fish stores. Each entry describes how the fish is sold (fillets, steaks, whole, salted), other names it goes by, how the fish should look, and buying tips. Fish begins with general guidelines on how to store, prepare, and cook fish, whether sauteing, frying, grilling, or smoking, and you will find easy-to-follow illustrations of such important basics as how to gut and fillet a fish. Fish also includes up-to-the-minute information on the health benefits of fish in our diet. In addition, there are more than five hundred recipes and variations, all of which use low-fat, high-flavor ingredients to accent the intrinsic natures of the individual fish rather than mask them. And the vast majority of the recipes are ready in less than thirty minutes. AUTHOR: MARK BITTMAN is one of the country's best-known, most widely respected food writers. His award-winning How to Cook Everything books, with more than one million copies in print, are a mainstay of the modern kitchen. He wrote the New York Times column "The Minimalist" for 13 years, and now writes for the Times' opinion section as well as the New York Times Magazine, and is a regular on the Today show .