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method for cooking filleted fish as you have total control and can easily see when it is cooked. There are a couple of rules. First, as with frying meat, make sure your pan is properly hot. I can’t say often enough that overcoming the fear of a really hot pan will improve your cooking no end. This, along with confident seasoning, are the two things that most mark out a professional chef from an amateur.
    Add olive oil and once it is at smoking point, lay your fish in. It should sizzle on contact with the oil. If it is a skinned fillet, especially of white fish, which has more delicate flesh, you may need to dust it in flour or breadcrumbs first to protect it from the heat. However, I always like to cook my fish with the skin on because the skin does that job for you and also adds extra flavour. So cook it skin side down for 90 per cent of the time, finishing it off only briefly on the other side. Don’t worry if it looks like it is sticking. If you wait, it will release itself once it is cooked. The worst thing to do is to keep fiddling and shifting it around, or it will break up. During the last minute or so of cooking, add a knob of butter and baste the fish continuously to keep it moist and flavoursome.
    GRILLING AND ROASTING
    Both these methods work well for whole fish and large steaks, particularly oily types such as salmon or mackerel. Sometimes I will pan-fry thick fillets first to get some colour on the skin, and then finish them off in a hot oven for about 10 minutes, this time with the skin on the top. White fish may need brushing with oil or melted butter to stop it from drying out.
    POACHING
    This is the gentlest way of cooking fish to enhance its delicate flavour and ensure it stays perfectly moist. The fish is cooked in liquid, sometimes wine, sometimes stock, sometimes milk, to which you can add herbs, spices and vegetables to infuse the fish. The key is to let the liquid barely simmer as a rolling boil will break up the fish. The stock you are left with can then be used to make a sauce to go with the fish.
    STEAMING
    Another very easy cooking method. You can, of course, use a fish kettle or steamer, but it is more interesting to steam fish en papillote , where you wrap the fish (normally a fillet) in a paper or foil parcel along with a splash of liquid, herbs and other flavourings. The great thing about cooking this way is that all the flavour is trapped in the bag and it makes a great dinner dish because each guest can cut open their own parcel.
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    HOW TO COOK A CRAB
    Yes, it is time-consuming and fiddly to cook a crab, but it’s also incredibly satisfying. The first thing to check in a crab is the weight: it should feel quite heavy for its size. A good live crab will also have extremely strong reflexes. A flaccid crab is a half-dead crab, and that’s no good because the minute it begins to die, an enzyme is released that starts to break down the meat, making it wet and lacklustre.
    Every fisherman and cook seems to have different opinions on the correct way to kill and cook a crab (for the most humane way, consult the RSPCA website). I think the simplest solution is to place it in a large pan of salted, cold water and boil for five minutes per 500g. Remove from the heat, allow it to cool and prepare to pick.
    Cover the table in plenty of old newspaper. Twist the claws to remove them from the body. Now hold the crab upside-down by its shell and pull the abdomen away. Inside the shell you will find all the brown meat. You can now take this meat out with a teaspoon and set it aside for later. Next, remove the crab’s gills, or dead man’s fingers, from the abdomen and throw them away.
    Now, using a sharp knife, dissect the abdomen. You will be able to see small tunnels, like a honeycomb, crammed with good, white crab meat. Here the real work begins. Use any small, sharp instrument, such as a skewer, to pick out the meat, keeping it separate from the dark meat.
    Finally, gently crush the claws with a