Crisp-fried little fish, eaten with French Fries and a good green salad . . . one of the few really good British dishes.

This is a real delicacy, not always available -at the fish market—but if you happen to be near water, and fresh “shiners” can be had from the fishing bait store, you’ve got whitebait!

3 pounds of whitebait
Seasoned flour—1 cup or more, plus 1 tsp salt, ½ tsp pepper, 1 tsp minced chervil or fresh parsley, ½ tsp paprika

Heat the fish-frying deep fat kettle.

Rinse the whitebait (or shiners) thoroughly; drain any excess water, and toss them in a paper bag filled with the seasoned flour. Place the floured whitebait in a frying basket, immerse in hot fat for 2 minutes, drain, garnish with lemon and fresh parsley and serve with plenty of tartar sauce.

Whitebait should be crisp and well-drained, and it’s ac­ceptable to eat them in your fingers—holding each fish by its little tail and dunking in the tartar sauce.

Lobster, in a rich wine sauce, baked in the lobster shell.

A traditional dish, named for the French Revolution . . . one cannot but applaud the single-mindedness that could create a new recipe in the shadow of the Guillotine, but per­haps that is why the French remain the masters of gas­tronomy.

• 2 cooked lobsters, split in half at the fish market
• 1 tin condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 2 T white wine
• ½ cup thin cream
• 2 T butter
• 1 tsp grated onion
• 4 minced mushroom stems (optional)
• Grated Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and 2 more tablespoons butter.

Remove all meat from lobsters, including claw meat; re­serve the cleaned body shells. Cut lobster meat into small pieces.

Melt 2 T butter, add onion, mushroom stems and lobster, and saute for 5 minutes.

Combine soup, wine and cream in a double boiler and heat until well blended and smooth, adding some minced parsley if you like. Add lobster mixture, and heat gently for 5 minutes. Then apportion among the lobster shells, sprinkle thickly with grated cheese and dust with bread crumbs. Dot with remaining butter and bake in a hot (450) oven for 10 minutes, or until the top browns.

Fish fillets in creamy shellfish sauce.

This recipe will require all your charm at the fish market —because you need so many ingredients and such small quantities of each—but the result is worth cajolery.

• 4 fillets of sole
• 8 oysters
• 8 Cherrystone clams
• 1 cooked package cleaned shrimp (or 12 fresh-cooked, shelled)
• 4 sea scallops
• 1 cup Sauterne
• 1 cup water
• ½ lemon, sliced thin
• 1 tin condensed mushroom soup
• ¾ cup milk
• 2 T sherry
• ¼ tsp each dry mustard and paprika
• ½ tsp Worcestershire Sauce
• 4 mushroom caps
• 4 T minced parsley
• Grated Parmesan cheese

Heat oven to 375.
Combine Sauterne, water and lemon, bring to a boil, lower heat sharply and poach fish fillets for 3 minutes. Remove fish to a buttered shallow baking dish. Surround with drained shellfish and decorate with mushroom caps; arrange for easy service in 4 portions. Combine soup, milk, sherry, mustard, paprika, Worcestershire, and blend smoothly. Gently pour over the fish fillets. Bake 15 minutes in the oven, and remove. Increase heat to broil; dust the dish with cheese, parsley and paprika, and broil for 4 minutes or until lightly browned.

• 1 pound bass, cut in serving slices
• 2 cooked lobsters, cut in pieces (shell and all)
• 1 cooked crab (cut in pieces like the lobster)
• 1 package frozen cleaned shrimp
• 12 scrubbed Little Neck clams or mussels
• ½ cup chopped mushrooms
• ½ cup olive oil
• 1 large chopped onion
• 2 minced cloves of garlic
• 2 T minced parsley
• 1 large chopped green pepper (seeds removed)
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 cloves
• 1 large tin drained tomatoes
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 cup hot water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 dash Cayenne pepper

Sauté: onions, garlic, parsley, green pepper and seasonings in warm olive oil for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, tomatoes, bass and shrimp, water and wine. Cover tightly and cook briskly for 10 minutes. Add lobsters, crab and clams or mus­sels; cover tightly and cook briskly for 10 minutes.

Serve in large soup plates, with plenty of fresh Italian bread, a glass of red wine, and a plain green salad.

• 2 pounds of mixed fish: cod or halibut, bass, mackerel, smelts, porgy or flounder, eel, red snapper, whiting, perch…. Have the fish cut in 1½ inch serving pieces, bones and all.
• 1 small cooked lobster, cut in serving pieces (shell & all)
• 1 dozen clams, well-scrubbed in their shells
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 3 sliced onions
• 3 crushed garlic cloves
• 2 sliced celery stalks (including the leaves )
• 2 chopped scallions or 1 peeled chopped leek
• 2 crumbled bay leaves
• 4 peeled chopped very ripe tomatoes
• 4 cups bouillon
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp pepper
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• ½ tsp saffron, steeped in 1 T hot water
• ½ tsp grated orange peel
• 2 cups white wine
• 2 tsp chopped parsley

OPTIONAL—if you live near the seashore:

• 2 small boiled crabs
• Mussels, in place of clams
• 2 dozen cleaned, deveined raw shrimp

Place vegetables and seasonings in a large pot—choose one with a tight cover!

Distribute the firm-fleshed fish (cod, halibut, eel, turbot, snapper, mackerel, sea bass) atop the vegetables, add olive oil, wine, and a cup of hot water.

Bring to the boil, and boil VIOLENTLY for 5 minutes. Add the soft-fleshed fish (smelts, whiting, porgy, perch, etc.) and boil violently for exactly 3 minutes.

Add the cooked cut lobster and scrubbed clams (as well as crabs, mussels and shrimps, if you are using them) and again boil fiercely for 8 minutes. Remove at once from the fire.

To serve Bouillabaisse, use the large old-fashioned soup dishes if you are lucky enough to have them. Garlic or Par­mesan toasted stale bread—plus a substantial green salad— go with Bouillabaisse. Put a piece of stale bread in the bot­tom of the soup plate, apportion the various kinds of fish and shellfish on top, and add enough of the liquid to float the fish. Serve plenty of extra bread for sopping up the juice.