Both husband and I come from fishing families so we have always cooked and eaten a lot of seafood.

The seasoning I use depends on the type of fish or shellfish. I use it to enhance the natural flavor of the fish, not overwhelm it. My favorite all-purpose seasoning is Old Bay and I’ve never tried to duplicate it by making it myself. I’ll use that with a bottle of beer and water when cooking shrimp, in the steaming water for blue crabs, or sometimes sprinkled on top of fish before cooking. I’ll also add some to white wine for poaching salmon. For grilled shrimp, I’ll brush with butter and sprinkle with Tony Chachere’s seafood seasoning.

Citrus fruits are a natural for fish and I don’t confine myself to lemons. I use a mixture of sliced
orange or tangerine, lemon, lime and onions mixed with Old Bay to cook fatty varieties like bluefish. I often drizzle flounder fillets with fresh orange juice before baking.

Butter goes so great with fish. Alton Brown has popularized "compound butters" but my mom made "flavored butters" probably before he was born. I have red wine butter (for oysters or steak, not fish), tomato-basil and orange-chive butter in the freezer right now and can whack off a chunk to spread on fish after cooking. A couple of weeks ago, we had small whole baked sea bass with mint-mango butter. It’s a different and delicate way to season fish or other foods.

I could talk about cooking fish all day long but I will restrain myself and resist the urge to start posting fish pix because I have to get out of here to go to the fish market this morning. My favorite fish cookbook is the out-of-print Ann Clark’s Fabulous Fish. Many of the recipes are a little fussy but it’s excellent for good basic fish cooking techniques.