ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, April 24, 1996              TAG: 9604240004
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 8    EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JANE SNOW KNIGHT- RIDDER/TRIBUNE 

HAVE NO FEAR HEALTHFUL, TASTY FISH DOESN'T HAVE TO BE DIFFICULT TO PREPARE

A 20-pound turkey you can handle. A pound of pork chops, no problem. But tilapia? Eeek!

Fear of fish is with us still. Although Americans are eating more of it than ever, almost 70 percent still is being ordered in restaurants.

When a chef is doing the cooking, you choose sweet and sour sole, silky poached salmon with cucumber-dill sauce and tilapia fish stew chunky with tomatoes and mellowed with wine.

When you're doing the cooking, you think simple fried perch, fried catfish nuggets or grilled swordfish.

No wonder we leave it to the chefs.

But the truth is that you don't need a kitchen full of cooks to get fish to the table. Fish is the original fast food - a 1-inch-thick fillet cooks in just 10 minutes. Even with fancy additions, the kitchen time is usually 30 minutes or less.

Some of the fish in supermarkets is frozen fish that has been thawed. That means you should cook it the same day you buy it, and make sure it hasn't been in the case too long. A simple sniff test will do it. Before the fish is sealed in plastic, ask to see it. If the fish smells strong, don't buy it. It should smell fresh and sweet.

Tilapia, a farm-raised fish with small, delicate fillets, is very lean and should be cooked by moist-heat. Higher-fat fish, such as salmon, are great for grilling and baking. The texture becomes almost silken when poached.

One exception to the low-fat/high-fat rule is grouper, which is low in fat but so moist that it cooks like a high-fat fish. Grouper is more expensive than some other fish - fillets are going for about $10 a pound, compared with catfish at about $5 and tilapia at about $6 - but it's worth it. Grouper is extremely mild and sweet, and the fillets are thick and meaty.

Within the general seafood category, soft-shell crabs, which are crustaceans, are just starting to emerge from their winter hibernation and will come into season around mid-May and be available fresh through September. Although well-qualified for their designation as "seafood delicacies," the crabs are easy to fix and easily adapt to deep frying, sauteing or grilling, as well as a number of more elaborate preparations.

Recipes are available at retail outlets selling the crabs. To receive several free brochures of catfish recipes, write to: Farm-Raised Catfish Brochures, P. O. Box 9021, Bridgeport, N.J. 08014.

- Food editor Almena Hughes contributed information to this story

Recipes for:

SWEET AND SOUR SOLE WITH GRAPES

CATFISH AL FORNO

SESAME-CRUSTED BAKED ALASKA HALIBUT|

RUSTIC FISH STEW

POACHED SALMON WITH CUCUMBER-DILL SAUCE

SAUTEED SOFT CRABS

LENGTH: Medium:   62 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  1. With seafood, a cook has no end of variety. Clockwise
          from left: Sesame-crusted Baked Alaska Halibut, 2. Sauteed Soft 
          Crabs, 3. Sweet and Sour Sole with Grapes. color.