Food & Drink: The premier catch of the day: Steve Hatt, a fourth-generation fishmonger, is one a vanishing breed. In pursuit of freshness, says Michael Bateman, he can give lessons to any early bird. This week, Rick Stein's recipes celebrate the simplicity and style of fresh shellfish

THE FISHMONGER is an endangered species. Indeed, people who shop at a fishmonger's are also a diminishing tribe. What sort of person, after all, thinks nothing of driving 30 miles to buy fish for a dinner party?

A day spent with Steve Hatt, a fourth-generation London fishmonger, reveals fascinating sub-strata of modern society. His shop in Islington is not half a mile from the warren of upmarket antique shops in Camden Passage, but it still entertains ladies in their eighties who inhabited the area half a century ago, before gentrification.

But these days, when they queue for their fillets of plaice and dab or sprats and herring, they find themselves alongside Islington high society (this is Tony Blair territory). Earnest politicians and architects, TV presenters and newspaper editors are inquiring about the price of halibut, lobster, sea bass and monkfish tails. As one whose customers are celebrities, Hatt is the soul of discretion.

One well-heeled client of Steve Hatt's spent several hundred pounds on caviar and smoked salmon. He was a City luminary on remand in Pentonville prison and sent round a chauffeur in his Rolls-Royce to buy it.

A more frequent customer is the wife of a multi-millionaire supermarket baron, who doesn't use her own stores when buying for a dinner party, preferring Steve Hatt's personal service, not to mention the sparkle of his sea-fresh fish. 'She told me 'We sell fish, but we're not fishmongers,' ' he says.

'I couldn't agree more,' says a customer, listening in to Steve's comments. This turns out to be a lawyer - the man who drives 30 miles (from Redhill in Surrey) to buy his fish here. 'I bet there was a time,' Steve says, 'when you'd have passed 30 fishmongers on the way here.' The lawyer agrees: 'And now there isn't one.'

There's another customer, says Steve, who buys lemon sole and then drives down to Devon with it. Coals to Newcastle, since most of the lemon sole he buys comes from the south-west fishing ports.

This is the sort of customer who discriminates to a fine degree. Steve points to a lemon sole on the shopfront display slab, glistening under a dribble of crushed ice. 'You can tell where this sole comes from by its colour. Sole from deep water off north-west Scotland is dark in colour, then, as you come round the coast in a clockwise direction, it gets paler, until you get to the south-west, when it has a very pale, sandy, light brown tint. That's the best eating.'

The colour is the fish's natural camouflage against backrounds of rocks or sand. But quality is critical, too, and this is dictated by the feed. 'I won't buy fish from the lower eastern half of the country. The North Sea is overfished, and with pollution too, the fish don't feed well. When you cut it open you can actually smell the impurity.'

Of course, it's only at the top end of the market that fishmongering thrives these days. Steve Hatt mines a narrow seam of customers who put quality before price.

Social change is one reason for the disappearance of the high street fishmonger, he says. As women went out to work full time, they were no longer able to shop daily. 'Fresh fish is the most perishable of goods. It's not something to keep for days. The French have it right. They buy it today and eat it today.'

And there's the economic change. For a century fish, eaten with chips, was a cheap food. 'Then, in the 1960s, we found that fish resources were dwindling, which led to the cod wars. The price of white fish tripled and quad-rupled. Fishmongers didn't know what to do. They said they didn't dare charge the new prices because they knew their customers couldn't pay. The way they sold fish then was basic. 'There's a cod, dear', and bang-slap, into a piece of newspaper.'

The fish industry at that time wasn't geared up to adapt to a wildly changing market. It was now becoming essential for fishmongers to invest heavily in the most up-to-date refrigeration. 'They were like new gamblers taking risks beyond their capabilities.' Many of them put down their money and were blown away. But the Hatts hung on to their hats.

Steve Hatt is 42, with a perky coif of swept-back, short grey hair. He now runs the business, although his father, also called Steve, is still the boss at 70 (when he's not salmon fishing on the Tay or the Tweed). William Morris, his great-grandfather on his mother's side, started up on this site in the early 1900s.

The back of the shop, which now houses modern crushed ice machinery, used to be the stable for the Hatts' horse, which pulled a cart between Essex Road and the old cobbled Billingsgate fish market in the City.

The shop incorporates a stygian-black, steel smokehouse, a tarred chimney high enough for Steve to disappear into when he's hanging salmon and haddock from the wooden and metal tenterhooks over the smouldering oak dust ('Dangerous? I've burnt through a few pairs of wellingtons'). In the Second World War the top floor of the shop was burnt out in an incendiary raid, but Steve Hatt's grandfather stayed open for business.

His other grandfather, who had a fish shop in Edmonton, was so stimulated by the wartime challenge that even in the middle of the worst food shortages he scoured the countryside in the evenings to persuade farmers to sell their eggs to him. 'He once had a record queue two miles long and three deep waiting to buy his eggs.'

Fishmongering is the least social of occupations. It's not only that it's cold, wet and sometimes smelly (less so at Steve Hatt's, the fish no more than 24 hours out of the water). It's the hours. Today Steve had allowed himself a half-hour lie-in, getting up at 3.30am. Wash, shave, a cup of tea, and then on to New Billingsgate market on the Isle of Dogs, arriving about 4.30am to skate round the market (more than 50 wholesalers operate there). The market opens for trading at 4.45am. 'You have to see everything, because all the very best stuff goes in the first 15 minutes.' He drives back to Islington and does his admin, processing orders on fax and answerphone. By noon he's already done an eight-hour day.

These days he goes home for some sleep, so he can spend the evening with his young family, Daniel two and a half, and Leah, six (her vivid painting of yellow fish in a blue ocean adorns his office pinboard; goldfish, he suspects). His wife, Carole, works for an insurance firm, in management training.

He goes shooting at weekends, but that's the limit of his social life. 'E'I used to go to dinner parties and fall asleep at the dinner taTHER write errorble. The strain of trying to prop your eyelids open with a matchstick at 9pm and hold an intelligent conversation was too much.'

He does a bit of cooking. Halibut (grilled, baked or steamed but never fried) is his favourite fish (the largest flatfish in the sea, the heaviest of which weighed in at a record 233lb. He has some in the shop today, cut from a 160lb specimen).

His wife loves a lobster (Scottish, never Canadian) and he likes lobster thermidor (baked with a creamy cheese sauce), but generally he prefers crab. Dressed crab with a salad, or baked in filo pastry, or in crabcakes, or baked with black beans and chilli, Chinese style. 'They use the hen crab,' he confides. 'It is smaller and rounder: the male is long and thin.'

Fish is fast to cook. 'My favourite is garlic prawns; I pan-fry fresh prawns in butter with garlic, finished with a splash of white wine. It takes four and a half minutes.'

He's an enthusiastic ambassador for fresh fish ('don't let anyone tell you that defrosted frozen fish is fresh fish') though he despairs at the British public. Good fresh fish isn't going to get cheaper. 'When the fishing gets rough in Biscay, the French, Italians and Spanish look towards our ports to buy. Their appetite for fish is vastly greater than ours, so, in effect, they set the price of fish at the top end of the market. Quality fish that sells for pounds 7 a pound on our market sells for pounds 17 a pound in Italy.

'We're losing a fish war right in our own backyard and most people don't even know that it has started.'

RECIPES FOR SHELLFISH

SHELLFISH BISQUE

Serves 4

1 small crab

1lb/500g prawns with the shells on

3oz/90g butter

3oz/90g peeled and chopped onions

3oz/90g peeled and chopped carrots

3oz/90g chopped celery

1 bayleaf

1fl oz/30ml brandy

4oz/120g tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato puree

2fl oz/60ml dry vermouth

21/2 pints/1.4 litres fish stock (made from fish bones and head, 1 large onion, 1 large carrot, 1 stick of celery and

3 pints/1.7 litres water) or chicken stock

2oz/60g rice

4fl oz/120ml cream

juice of a quarter lemon

pinch of cayenne pepper

salt and ground black pepper

A stock cube is not totally inadmissible for this recipe but if you prefer to make your own chop the onion, carrot and celery into small pieces. Place in a large saucepan, put fish or shellfish trimmings on top and add water. Bring slowly to the boil then simmer for 15 mintues. Concentrate the flavours by reducing with rapid boiling.

Remove the stomach sac from the crab and break up the shell with a rolling pin. Chop up the prawns finely with a heavy knife. Melt the butter in a thick-bottomed pan and add the onions, carrots, celery and bayleaf. Cook till just beginning to colour. Add the crab (meat and shell) and prawns and crush them down into the vegetables with the end of a rolling pin. Pour on the brandy and evaporate it away; then add the tomatoes, tomato puree, and dry vermouth. Reduce somewhat and add the fish stock (or chicken stock) and the rice.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes, then liquidise in two or three stages, removing any particularly thick shells before you do this. You need only liquidise the shells to a point where the largest pieces are about the size of your fingernail. Pass the soup through a conical strainer, pressing through as much liquid as you can with the back of a ladle. Now pass the soup through a fine strainer twice, and again if you find it too grainy, though I like a certain amount of texture to the bisque.

Add the cream and lemon juice and season with salt, ground black pepper and cayenne pepper to your taste.

POTTED SHRIMPS

I know of no better book on cooking fish and shellfish than Jane Grigson's Fish Book (Michael Joseph, pounds20). I use her recipe for potted shrimps. Serves 8

1 pint/600 ml peeled shrimps

3-4 ozs/100-125g butter

1 blade mace (dried outer skin of nutmeg)

grated nutmeg (tiniest pinch)

cayenne pepper (tiny pinch)

clarified butter for covering

Melt the butter with the mace, cayenne and nutmeg. Stir in the shrimps and heat without boiling, stirring all the time. Remove the mace and divide the shrimps between little pots. Cool in the fridge.

Cover with melted, clarified butter, and chill again.

To serve: warm potted shrimps slightly, and eat with brown bread and butter. (You can also pot lobster, crab and prawns in the same way).

LOBSTER, TURBOT AND MUSSELS WITH STAR ANISE NAGE

A nage is the French word for a court bouillon that is specifically for fish. The word comes from nager, meaning to swim. This dish works very well with other fish, as well as mussels, oysters, crayfish or langoustine. The absolutely essential requirement is that the fish and shellfish should be undercooked.

Serves 4

4oz/120g lobster meat (the meat from a 1lb/500g lobster)

4oz/120g turbot fillet

24 small mussels, well washed (or 4 large fresh scallops with corals)

4fl oz/120ml double cream

4 very small carrots

8 mangetout

8 French beans

1 small courgette cut into slices

8 small spinach leaves

2oz/60g cold butter cut into pieces

pinch of ground star anise

12 chervil leaves

For the nage for poaching the shellfish:

2 sliced carrots

1 sliced white of leek

2 sliced celery stalks

1/2 sliced medium onion

2 pints water

1/2oz/15g salt

the zest and flesh of half a lemon

2 unpeeled cloves garlic

15 green peppercorns

5 star anise heads (available from Chinese and Indian food stores)

small bunch parsley stalks

1 bay leaf

1 sprig fennel

1 sprig thyme

1/2 pint/300ml dry white wine

First make the nage. Simmer everything except the wine for 30 minutes, add the wine, bring to boil 30 seconds then cool. Leave for at least 12 hours and strain. Cut the turbot into pieces about 1in wide, cut the scallops in two and cut the lobster into half-inch slices.

Add the cream to the nage, bring to the boil and reduce the volume by half by rapid boiling. While the nage is reducing blanch the carrots, the beans and the mangetout in boiling salted water for 3 minutes then refresh in cold water.

Add the courgettes, spinach, fish and shellfish to the reduced nage and simmer for one minute then add the blanched vegetables and simmer for one minute. With a slotted spoon or fish slice, lift the fish, shellfish and vegetables into four warmed soup plates. Whisk the cold butter into the sauce and add a small pinch of ground star anise. Pour the sauce over the fish and vegetables and garnish with some chervil leaves.

CONCHIGLIETTE WITH SEAFOOD AND SAFFRON

Shell pasta with mussels, prawns and lemon sole in a saffron-flavoured sauce. The small shells called conchigliette look best, but the bigger conchiglie will do. In fact you can use any pasta, but if it's in long strands like spaghetti it is best to cut it up after cooking and before mixing it with the seafood. .

Serves 4

14oz/420g shell pasta

20 - 35 mussels (depending on size)

1fl oz/30ml white wine

1oz/30g finely chopped onion

12oz/360g skinned lemon sole fillet

8fl oz/240ml fish stock (see recipe for shellfish bisque on previous page)

salt and pepper

2fl oz/60ml mussel liquor (from cooking the mussels)

a good pinch of saffron

5fl oz/150ml double cream

4oz/120g shelled prawns

Cook the pasta in 4 pints/about 21/2 litres of well-salted water till it is al dente (not totally soft).

Put the mussels in a saucepan, sprinkle with half the wine and some of the chopped onion, and cook over a high heat with the lid on until the mussels open. Strain through a colander into a bowl, reserving the liquid. Remove the beards and shells from the mussels.

Cut the lemon sole fillet into goujons about the size of your little finger. Put these into a shallow pan with the rest of the wine and the chopped onion and two tablespons of the fish stock. Season with salt and white pepper, cover with a butter paper and cook gently on the stove until the fish has just turned white.

Strain carefully through a colander and put the strained cooking juice, the rest of the fish stock, the mussel liquor and the saffron into a pan large enough

to take the pasta (this pan will also be the serving dish). Bring to the boil and simmer for a couple of minutes, then add the cream. Bring back to the boil and reduce till the sauce is the consistency of single cream.

Add the prawns, pasta and mussels and warm through. Finally, add the lemon sole - with care, as it breaks up easily.

FRESH CRAB SALAD WITH CUCUMBER AND ENDIVE

Based on a similar salad I ate at The Carved Angel restaurant in Dartmouth, typical of that innovative cook, Joyce Molyneux.

Serves 4

8oz/240g white crab meat

4oz/120g brown crab meat

For the mayonnaise:

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

1 leaf of spinach or 1 teaspoon of parsley (for the nice green colour)

1 teaspoon chopped tarragon

1/2 teaspoon salt

6fl oz/180ml olive oil

For the cucumber salad:

half a cucumber

1 teaspoon chopped parsley

1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce (Nam pla)

4fl oz/120ml water

juice and zest of 1 lime

For the endive salad:

10fl oz/300ml groundnut oil

2fl oz/60ml white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon English mustard

1/2 small clove of garlic, finely chopped

1/2 shallot, finely chopped

11/2 teaspoon of quatre epices (see below)

double handful of inner endive leaves

To make quatre epices mix 3/4 teaspoon black pepper, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon all spice. This is much more than you need, but it is an essential in any serious kitchen.

The crab meat is best picked from a freshly boiled crab.

For the mayonnaise, put all the ingredients but the olive oil in a food processor. Switch on; add the oil in a steady stream.

Peel the cucumber, cut into segments lengthways and re-move seeds. Slice thinly. Mix parsley, fish sauce, lime juice and zest and water together and dress cucumber in a small bowl.

Put the oil, vinegar, mustard, garlic, shallot and quatre epices in a bowl and whisk together. Dress the salad.

Assemble by placing a pile of crab meat on each plate, with a dollop of mayonnaise, and a serving of the cucumber salad and of the endive salad.

DEEP FRIED

LANGOUSTINE IN TEMPURA BATTER

Like lobsters, langoustines look much more impressive in their shells than. The preparation for this recipe dish calls for some dexterity because the tail shells must be removed leaving the tail meat still attached to the bodies. It is worth taking the trouble; the whole langoustines, served with a bowl of chilli and soya sauce, look memorable. Choose langoustines with tails which have a good spring in them. Those with slack tails will be soft inside.

Serves 4

24 whole cooked langoustines

For the chilli sauce:

3fl oz/90ml soya sauce

3fl oz/90ml water

zest and juice of 1 lime

1oz/30g ginger, peeled and finely chopped

4 spring onions, finely sliced

1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped

For the tempura batter:

4oz/120g flour

2oz/60g corn flour

7fl oz/210ml chilled water

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon Chinese five spice powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Carefully remove the shells from the tails, being particularly careful to avoid separating the tail from the head. Grip the sides of the tail with your thumb and forefinger and push the bottom edges together to crack the shell. Gently peel the tail shell back the other way. Try not to put any pressure on to the langoustine where the tail meat goes into the body section.

Mix together all the ingredients for the chilli sauce. Whisk the tempura batter ingredients together just before dipping the langoustines. The batter should be only just amalgamated so that a few small lumps of flour are still apparent.

Set the deep fryer to 180C/ 350F. Dip langoustines in batter and fry for 2 minutes; remove and drain on kitchen paper.

Arrange on one large serving dish with a bowl of chilli sauce.

CHARGRILLED SQUID WITH A PEPPER MARINADE

Squid marinated in olive oil with black and Sichuan pepper. It's best cooked on a barbecue grill but you can get good results on a ribbed steak pan.

Serves 4

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon Sichuan pepper

2fl oz/60ml virgin olive oil

juice of 1/2 a lemon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon soya sauce

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

12oz/360g cleaned squid

3oz/90g salad leaves, washed and dried

Grind the black pepper and Sichuan pepper coarsely. Use a mortar and pestle or put the peppers on a chopping board, cover them with a clean tea towel and roll over them with a rolling pin. Put them in a bowl with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, soya sauce and garlic.

Light your barbecue.

Cut the bodies of the squid into 3in pieces, cut each tentacle in half. Put the squid into the marinade and leave for 30 minutes, turning over once or twice. Take the squid out of the marinade, grill for 1 minute, turn and grill for another minute.

Put the salad leaves on four plates, arrange the squid on top of them and drizzle the rest of the marinade over all.

HOT SHELLFISH WITH OLIVE OIL, GARLIC AND LEMON JUICE

An Italian dish, a sort of hot fruits de mer. The quantities of shellfish are a suggestion. You may like to make the dish out of fewer or more varieties, or include crab or lobster as well and make it into a main course.

Serves 4 as a first course

8 whelks

40 winkles

12 oysters

24 mussels

20 small clams

8 large clams

20 cockles

8 cooked langoustine

8 cooked Mediterranean Prawns

3fl oz/90ml extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic finely chopped

1 small bunch parsley, preferably broad leaf, roughly chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

juice of half a lemon

Cook the whelks and winkles in well-salted water if not already cooked. The whelks should be brought to the boil and simmered for 4 minutes. The winkles should be brought to the boil and then drained at once. Keep them warm.

Place the winkles and whelks, if already cooked, and the langoustine and prawns in a pan of well-salted water and warm them through.

Put the mussels in a large saucepan with a lid, splash in a little dry white wine. Place the pan on a fierce heat and let them open, remove with a perforated spoon and keep warm. Do the same with the large clams and then the small ones and finally the oysters. These will take the longest and will not open fully; you will need to lever them open with a short, thick-bladed knife or oyster knife.

Strain all but a tablespoonful of the cooking liquor into a small pan through a fine sieve. (The last spoonful will contain a fair amount of grit).

Arrange all of the shellfish on four large warm plates or one very large serving dish.

Add the olive oil, garlic, parsley, chilli and lemon juice to the small pan with shellfish liquor in it. Bring to the boil and pour over the shells on the plates.

Serve with plenty of French bread or Ciabatta and a bottle or two of Vernaccia di San Gimignano.

MUSSELS, COCKLES AND CLAMS MASALA

East meets West in an arranged marriage between the moules la marinire of France and the spicing of India. The quantities given for the masala should make more than enough paste, so keep the rest in an airtight jar in the fridge for another curry dish. I spread it inside a boned, fresh mackerel, lightly fasten the fish with string, fry it briefly on both sides to crisp up, and finish it in a hot oven for 10 minutes.

Serves 4 as first course

7 pints/4 litres mixed mussels, clams and cockles

vegetable oil

For the masala:

2 tablespoons cumin seeds

1 tablespoon coriander seeds

1 teaspoon cloves

12oz/300g onions, finely chopped

8 large cloves garlic

2oz/55g piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

walnut-sized knob of dried tamarind pulp (if available)

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

3 fresh (medium or long) red chillies, seeds included

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons coconut cream

For the garnish:

2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander leaves

a little home-made fish stock (optional)

To make the masala: in a frying pan, dry-fry the coriander seeds and cloves over a medium heat for a few minutes. Then add the cumin seeds, heating for another 30 seconds. Put these with the remainder of the masala ingredients and whiz to paste in a blender. (If very stiff add a little vegetable oil to loosen it).

You need a large pan, preferably a wok, to cook this dish. Take 6 level tablespoons of the masala paste. Fry the paste in a little vegetable oil, until the solids split from the oil.

Toss in the mussels, clams and cockles, tossing them about in the curry paste. Then cover with a lid and, shaking from time to time, steam-cook until the shells open. Throw in a generous amount of chopped coriander and serve in bowls with good country bread.

If you feel the mussels haven't produced enough liquid you can add a little hot fish stock. The recipe contains no salt as mussels are salty, but taste to check.

STEAMED MUSSELS WITH BLACK BEANS, GARLIC AND GINGER

In her excellent Classic Chinese Cookbook, Yan-kit So says that black beans and clams go together for the Chinese as horseradish and roast beef do for us. The same is true of mussels and black beans. This recipe is based on her Clams in Black Bean Sauce.

Serves 4

80 small or 60 large mussels

1 teaspoon preserved black beans

1/4 teaspoon sugar

3 spring onions

4 cloves garlic finely chopped

1/2oz/15g ginger, peeled and finely chopped

1fl oz/30ml groundnut oil

1 tablespoon soya sauce

2 tablespoons rice wine or dry sherry

3 tablespoons stock or water

1/2 teaspoon roughly chopped coriander

Wash the mussels in plenty of cold water, scrape off any barnacles and pull out the fibrous 'beard'. Wash again. Discard any mussels that are gaping open and do not show some signs of closing when tapped.

Rinse the black beans and mash them together with the sugar.

Cut the white part of the spring onions and thinly slice; do the same with the green.

Put the groundnut oil in a wok and heat till very hot. Add the garlic and ginger and stir fry till the smell of hot garlic and ginger rises. Add the white part of the spring onions and stir fry a little more. Put in the mussels, add the soya sauce, the rice wine or sherry and stock or water. Place a lid on the wok and steam the mussels open. As soon as they are all open toss in the coriander and green onions, turn over and serve.

If you prefer a thicker soup you can remove the mussels to a warm serving dish and stir a teaspoon of arrowroot mixed with a little water into the sauce. Bring to the boil to let it thicken and pour over the mussels.

OYSTERS WITH BEURRE BLANC AND SPINACH

The oysters in this dish are hardly cooked at all and the combination is fresh and pleasing

Serves 4

16 oysters

16 spinach leaves (washed, stalks removed)

1oz/30g finely chopped shallot or onion

1/2 fl oz/15ml white wine vinegar

1/2 fl oz/15ml white wine

2fl oz/60ml water

5oz/150g unsalted butter

Prepare a steamer to cook the oysters. Thoroughly wash the oysters and steam for about 4 minutes. Remove and open, keeping the liquor that comes out of them. Put the spinach leaves in the steamer and steam for 2 minutes.

While you are steaming the oysters, put the shallots, vinegar, wine and water in a small pan. Add the juice from the oysters and simmer till only about 2 tablespoons (30ml) of liquid are left. Cut the butter into small squares and whisk it in a little at a time off the heat, building up a light emulsion.

Remove the oysters from their shells and lay a folded leaf of spinach in the bottom of each. Place these shells on a suitable serving dish and push briefly under the grill to warm up the spinach. Put the oysters on top and pour the beurre blanc over each. Place under the grill again just to warm through and serve, perhaps with a chilled bottle of Bourgogne Aligote.

BOUILLABAISSE

This is my recipe for bouillabaisse, and is not intended to be the definitive account of the dish. It is not possible, in Britain, to obtain the correct small rock fish, including the essential rascasse, which go into the Mediterranean bouillabaisse. The dish should be made with a large variety of small fish which are all cooked unfilleted. Sometimes, at the restaurant, if we are lucky enough to get an odd box of small gurnard, red mullet, weever, black bream or John Dory, we produce a bouillabaisse using whole fish, but normally we use fillets of larger fish, so that we can put five or six different varieties into the stew.

This then is a bouillabaisse made as authentically as possible using what is best available around Padstow. If you take a severe view on my naming it thus, maybe you'd like to think of it as Padstow Fish Stew.

One change that I have made to the recipe is to prepare a fish stock out of the bones of the fish I am using. Then I boil the fillets in the stock, having added the olive oil, vegetables and herbs. This increases the strength of the finished soup.

Serves 4

4kg of any of the following fish: wrasse, dogfish, black bream, red bream, monkfish, cod or hake, weever, trigger fish, gurnard, red mullet, bass, John Dory, bream, skate, conger eel, grey mullet - the more variety the better

3 medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped

1lb/450g tomatoes, peeled and chopped, reserving the skins

3 pints/1.7 litres water

3fl oz/90ml olive oil

12 thin slices of French bread

The white of a large leek, washed and roughly chopped

2 sticks of celery, thinly sliced

1 large bulb of Florence fennel, thinly sliced

5 cloves of garlic, chopped

freshly ground black pepper

2in/5cm piece of orange peel

1 level teaspoon saffron

1 sprig of thyme

2 bayleaves

1lb/450g mussels, washed and scraped clean of barnacles, with beards pulled out

1/2lb/225g shellfish: slices of lobster or crayfish, or langoustine or prawns in the shell

1 teaspoon/2.5ml of chopped fennel herb, with a few leaves of thyme, to sprinkle over the cooked fish

salt

For the rouille

20z/60g dry bread soaked in fish stock (see below)

6 cloves garlic

1 egg yolk

6 tablespoons/90ml harissa (spicy chilli sauce available from good continental food shops)

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 pint/450ml olive oil

Fillet all the fish except skate (if you are using it). Cut the fillets so that they are all about the same size.

Put one third of the onions in the bottom of a large pan with the tomato skins. Place all the fish trimmings on top and add the water. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Strain the stock.

Make the rouille by putting all the ingredients for it in a food processor and blending. Then pour in the oil as for making mayonnaise.

Fry the French bread croutons in a little olive oil till a light gold colour. Rub with garlic and keep warm.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan large enough to hold all the fish and stock. Soften the rest of the onions, the leek, celery, Florence fennel and garlic. Season with black pepper. Add the orange peel, tomatoes, saffron, thyme, bayleaves and the fish stock and bring to the boil, whisking as it comes to the boil to aid the emulsion of oil and stock.

Now add the fish, putting the firmer-fleshed fish like conger eel, dogfish and skate in first. Add the softer fish and mussels a couple of minutes later. Boil only till the fish is just cooked (about 5 minutes).

Add the shellfish and boil for a further half minute. Strain the soup through a colander and place all the fish, mussels, shellfish and vegetables in a large warm dish. The mussels and shellfish should be left in the shell. Scatter with the chopped fennel and thyme and put the croutons on top.

Return the strained soup to the saucepan and test for seasoning. Boil the soup very vigourously for one more minute, whisking as you do to liaise oil and water. Now pour some of the soup over the fish and croutons.

Serve the rest of the soup in a warm tureen. I think the nicest way to eat the bouillabaisse is to spoon both fish and soup into a soup bowl and stir in a dollop of rouille; but you can if you like treat the fish and soup as two separate courses. Certainly the fish cooked this way, in stock rather than water, will not have lost all its flavour to the soup.

SAUTEED SCALLOPS WITH MANGE-TOUT PEAS

Very much a dish for perfectly fresh scallops. They are just seared in a very hot pan, so that you get the best of both worlds: the sweet caramelised taste of fried scallops on the outside and with the delicacy of undercooked scallops as well.

4oz/120g mange-tout peas chopped small

8 scallops

1oz/30g unsalted butter

1 teaspoon/5ml chopped basil

salt and ground black pepper

a little fish sauce (Nam pla)

Wash, top and tail the mange-tout peas and blanch them in boiling salted water for 2 minutes. Drain and refresh in cold water.

Cut the scallops into 3 slices. Take a thick-bottomed frying pan and heat until extremely hot. Put in a small knob of the butter, quickly brush it around the bottom of the pan with a pastry brush, and immediately throw in the scallops. Cook for about 10 seconds and turn over with a palette knife or toss. Cook for a further 20 seconds, take off the heat and lift the scallops out with a fish slice into a warm dish.

Put in the rest of the butter and then the mange-tout peas and the chopped basil. Return to the heat and let the peas warm through in the butter. Season with salt and black pepper, and moisten with a little fish sauce. Add the peas, basil and cooking butter to the warm scallops and serve.

(Photograph omitted)