More about Olivia & Super Seafood Recipes

Welcome to Super Seafood Recipes, my website about using seafood to make healthy meals!

My passion for cooking started when I was 3 years old and tried to make toast in my mom's printer.  That episode led to my first kitchen - plastic! - where I concocted recipes and cooked entire dinners of plastic food until I "graduated" to our real kitchen when I was 12.

I spent the next few years working my way through my mom's cookbooks and recipes from the internet - but soon, I started making substitutions and changes, and creating dishes of my own.  The problem?  I never wrote anything down, which meant I could never re-create my "masterpieces" (or avoid repeating my mistakes).  So in 2010, I created Super Seafood Recipes as a way to share my best recipes, and show others how easy and fast they are to make.  I've been adding to it ever since.

Why seafood?  That's easy - I love cooking and eating seafood.  There are so many different kinds of fish and shellfish that seafood never gets boring.  Plus it's easy to prepare, and usually healthy for you. 

Not surprisingly, when I headed off to college, I ended up majoring in Nutrition after a brief detour through Neuroscience.  I'd been a science/math/music nerd in high school, and always thought of cooking as just a hobby.  However, being a specialist in nutrition lets me combine my love of food and cooking with my interests in health, science, fitness, exercise, and general well-being.

About My Recipes

I love cooking (and eating) seafood because it's delicious.  And when you use the right cooking methods and ingredients, it's usually healthy to eat, and fast and fun to make.   I like the flavor of the fish or shellfish to shine through, so I make sure the other ingredients in my recipes enhance rather than smother the taste of the seafood.

Most of my recipes make 4 servings.  I add basic nutrition information to each recipe for calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat (saturated and unsaturated).  The tool that I use to help with this is called MyPlate SuperTracker (go to the Popular Tools section and click on SuperTracker).  It also lets you calculate other nutrients and vitamins, track your exercise, and create your own goals and plans for healthy eating and fitness.

I have personally cooked all the recipes included on Super Seafood Recipes, usually many times.  I do sometimes tweak them a bit, so if I come up with a change that I like better than the original, I update it on the website.  I only publish recipes that turn out well.  Like most cooks who like to experiment, I have my share of disappointments and disasters, but you won't see them here!  Most are very easy and fast to make.  A few such as paella can be more time-consuming (although the results are so worth it!), but when this is the case, I alert you right on the recipe page. 

All of the content on the site - recipes, tips and other content, photographs - are created by me, unless otherwise noted.  As you can see, I haven't mastered the art of food photography yet, but I'm working on it!  

About My Food

I like to know what I'm eating, so I make almost everything from scratch - easy to do when you're cooking seafood!  I cook with natural ingredients and whole foods, preferably organically produced, and buy locally sourced seafood and produce as much as possible.  I believe in portion control and exercise rather than calorie-counting. 

I am lucky to live in a coastal area (Boston, on the northeast coast of the U.S.) where fresh local seafood is plentiful throughout much of the year (keep in mind that not too many fishing boats go out in frigid New England waters during the colder winter months!) but what if you live in an area where fresh seafood isn't readily available?  No worries - the good news is that flash freezing technology allows fish to be quickly frozen in vacuum-sealed packs right on the fishing boat within hours of being caught, which locks in most of the nutrition, moisture, and flavor. 

Although you won't find sponsored posts or recipe development for specific food brands on this website, some of my photos do include actual products that I use .  Although these photos are in no way intended as endorsements, they are products that I like.

Although fish species and names vary somewhat locally depending on where you live, there are enough similarities so that you can find an equivalent for most things.  For example, bass is a common name that is often used for river bass or sea bass in the U.S., branzino or loup de mer in Europe, and perch in Australia.  What's important to know for cooking is that it is a mild white fish that's also similar to American cod, red snapper, or grouper - so you can use any of these and get similar results in a recipe that calls for bass.

Most seafood has a delicate flavor, so you don't really have much to do to enhance it.  I do like to experiment with different cooking techniques for the fish and shellfish, and create a variety of different sauces that you can use interchangeably.  Most of the sauces also work well with meat or tofu, so sometimes I make a double amount and use the leftover sauce with chicken, tofu, pork, or even steak the next day. 

Keep In Touch

Want to try my latest recipes?  I send out a newsletter about once a month highlighting my newest creations.  You can also find my updates on Facebook.  Questions about the recipes or cooking seafood?  You can contact me by email here and I will answer your question on the website.