A Seafood Cookbook For Everybody: Author Rawn To Sign Books In Chatham Sunday

The charcuterie board has enjoyed great popularity in recent years, in part because of how creative a chef can be when putting it together.

 So why not the seacuterie board?

Jenny Shea Rawn, a former Chatham summer visitor and author of the new cookbook “Coastal Kitchen: Nourishing Seafood Recipes for Everyday Cooking” (Globe Pequot, 2023), calls the seacuterie board “a star in the entertaining area.” And there are so many variants that are perfect for Cape Cod. Take the Cranberry seacuterie board — this includes cranberry mignonette (cranberries whisked with white wine vinegar, sparking wine, sugar and more). As for seafood, the board includes seared sea scallops, cooked shrimp and raw oysters. Add olives, capers, a cheese spread, crackers and decorate with fragrant sprigs of rosemary. Assembled on a board or plate, it’s beautiful.

“Coastal Kitchen” is Rawn’s debut book. She is a nationally recognized registered dietician as well as a recipe developer and seafood blogger. She is also a seafood ambassador for Seafood Nutrition Partnership, a leading non-profit organization in the U.S. building awareness of the health and nutritional benefits of seafood. She lives in Boothbay, Maine.

On her website Rawn has been creating recipes with corresponding photographs. “My book is a combination of new recipes, plus favorites from my website,” she said in an email interview last week. It took her about four months to pull the book’s content together, which included “writing and testing new recipes, photographing them, editing new and old recipes, writing all the additional helpful content in the book.”

Rawn was introduced to fresh seafood as a child summering in Chatham. Her grandmother, Louise Shea, was a watercolor artist living in North Chatham in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When Rawn was a young child, she, her parents Mimi and Peter Shea, and her extended family would stay at Horne’s Cottages off Morris Island Road. 

“These cottages were right on the beach, so we spent our days playing in the sand right there,” she says. “I remember we would visit the marina, just down the road, each day and find starfish, sand dollars and sea horses.”

When the family went out for meals, they often headed to local restaurants that featured seafood. In her book she even mentions Kream n’ Kone. It was a “family favorite of ours (I still dream of their fried seafood).”

“Chatham is one of my favorite places in the world,” she says.

All of this is a perfect background for the eventual writer of “Coastal Kitchen.” The book is illustrated with such luscious color photographs that you will think you’re looking into the display in a fish store or at the plate of seafood just set in front of you in a restaurant.

The chapters cover lobster; scallops (sea and bay); oysters, mussels and clams; crab; shrimp; swordfish, tuna and striped bass; skate, bluefish, black sea bass, monkfish and squid; white fish; salmon; kelp; seacuterie boards; seafood sauces and condiments; non-seafood appetizers, side dishes and salads; and finally desserts from New England and beyond. In a section called “Seafood Extras,” Rawn also covers such topics as sustainable seafoods, wild and farmed seafood, safe cooking techniques and even “tips to get kids to eat more seafood.”

So how do you get kids to eat more seafood?

Start by serving the child “a white, mild, flaky fish like haddock or cod — or even monkfish or swordfish,” Rawn says. “Go mild first.”

Obtain fresh fish rather than frozen, tinned or dried. “There is nothing like the flavor and texture of fresh fish, especially when it is caught right off the Cape Cod coast.” Pair the fish with something familiar the child already knows and loves. Prepare the fish in a familiar way such as seasoned and breaded. And maybe remove any fresh herbs as many kids “don’t like green things in their food.” Serve the fish at lunch, eat it yourself, and add a dipping sauce.

But “you can’t force it,” Rawn adds. “Maybe a non-seafood eater will come around and maybe he/she won’t. And that’s OK, too.”

Rawn’s 7-year-old daughter Lexi is “a huge seafood lover. And she wants to write a book.” Rawn and Lexi are in the preliminary stages of writing a small kids’ seafood cookbook. “There is a need for simple, tasty, kid-friendly seafood recipes. So, we are looking to fill that gap. All the recipes will be kid-tested and approved.”

“Coastal Kitchen” won the 2023 Readable Feast Award for excellence in single-subject writing. Rawn’s website JennySheaRawn.com features seafood recipes and ideas for coastal living.

Taylor Brown, the daughter of a commercial fisherman and founder of The Fisherman’s Daughter at 521 Main St., noticed that in several of the photos in her book Rawn is sporting a Fisherman’s Daughter hat. The store sells “ocean-inspired” clothing and jewelry made on Cape Cod. Fisherman’s Daughter is sponsoring Rawn’s local book signing event.

Rawn will sign copies of “Coastal Kitchen” at the Wild Goose Tavern at the Chatham Wayside Inn, 512 Main St. on Sunday, Sept. 15 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.