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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Step 1: steam the chicken (or cook in a pressure-cooker); cool slightly and dice the meat. Slightly undercook peas, artichoke hearts and shrimp.

Step 2: saute onions and garlic in olive oil. Add consomme, rice, seasonings, chicken, tomatoes and sliced sausages. Cover and simmer 10 minutes, checking occasionally to stir and add extra consomme if needed.

Add peas, artichoke hearts, cooked shrimps, and place well-scrubbed clams on top. Cover tightly and steam for 10 minutes or until the clamshells open. Serve with strips of pimiento for decoration.

Real Spaniards use: eels, lobster, crabs, fried eggplant sticks and oysters, mushrooms—any or all Paella is one of the great dishes, to be made with whatever is available.

Any shell­fish will respond to this treatment, alone or in combination. Large scallop and clam shells can be bought in any gour­met shop; once you have them, never let them go.

• 1 ½ cups white wine
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 T fresh chopped parsley
• ¼ tsp each thyme and fennel seeds
• 1 ½ pounds scallops
• ½ pound mushrooms
• 6 shallots or a small white onion
• 1 T butter
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Alternate Sauce Preparation:

Sauce #1

• 1 tin condensed mushroom soup
• 2 egg yolks
• 4 T heavy cream

Sauce #2

• 4 T flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 4 T heavy cream
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 T butter

Combine wine, bay leaf, parsley, thyme and fennel; bring to a boil, add scallops and simmer 10 minutes. Sea scallops should be cut in pieces, but the tiny Eastern bay scallops are used whole. Drain, but reserve the hot liquid.

Separately, sauté sliced mushrooms, shallots or onion in butter and lemon juice, for 10 minutes. Strain and combine all the hot liquids in one pan, all the solids in another.

Heat the oven to 375.

Bed oysters in their shells upright in crumpled aluminum foil in a baking pan.
Sprinkle lightly with sherry.

Cook spinach till slightly underdone, and drain thoroughly.

Meanwhile, combine condensed soup with ½ cup milk and heat gently. Add a beaten egg, blend thoroughly and place over hot water.

In a separate skillet, melt the butter and saute onion for 3 minutes. Add drained spinach and ¼ cup of the soup, plus all seasonings, and blend. Saute for 3 minutes, distribute over the waiting oysters. Top with the rest of “the soup-sauce, sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and bake for 15 min­utes until light brown.

Reserve 8 shrimp for garnishing; grind the remainder or pound in a mortar. Combine ground shrimps with water, wine, bread crumbs, lemon rind, and generous pinch of ground nutmeg in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, and cook for 7 min­utes, stirring constantly. Strain through a fine sieve and re­turn to low heat.

Beat together the egg yolk and cream and add, stirring gently. Heat until shrimp soup thickens slightly but do not allow to boil. Finally, remove from fire; cool, add the chives, parsley and peeled diced cucumber. Chill overnight in the refrigerator, and serve with a garnish of the remaining shrimps, coarse-chopped, plus a large tablespoon of sour cream or yogurt.

• 1 medium-sized tin each: prunes, apricots, pears
• 3 tart apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 T cornstarch, mixed to a paste with a little cold water

Combine fruits (with their juices), apple and cinnamon, and add 1 cup water. Simmer very gently until the fruit is extremely mushy (about 10 minutes). Force through a sieve into a saucepan, add the cornstarch mixed with water, bring to a boil and stir smoothly, cooking for 2 minutes. Cool over­night before serving.

NOTE: Almost any fruit can be used for the cold Scandina­vian fruit soups: cherries, strawberries, raspberries—even peaches or nectarines . . . but the basic theory is always the same: Reduce the fruit to a mush with enough water to aid in extracting the natural juice; sweeten to taste (if you are using fresh fruit); spice with a cinnamon stick or 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg; thicken with cornstarch and water. Chill overnight, and serve with a few bits of fresh fruit.