Line-caught sea bass with mussels, seasonal vegetables and a spicy ginger, seaweed, lemon and tamari broth

Serves 4-6

For the broth:

Once you’ve filleted the fish, keep the bones, head and any trim as they still contain lots of flavour and nutrients. Discard any blood, gills or guts as they will make the stock cloudy and bitter.

Add the bones, head and trim to a saucepan together with the vegetables. This is a really good opportunity to use up any veg that’s wilted or slightly past-its-best, or even herb stems! Leeks work great too as well as shallots, but carrots tend to make the stock too dark and cloudy so I tend to avoid using those.

Add in the remaining aromatics and fill up the saucepan with water so that the bones are just covered, then place it on a medium heat. Let this reach a boil, simmer for 5 minutes and then remove from the heat.

Cover the saucepan with foil or a lid and let the stock reach room temperature, then line a large sieve with muslin cloth or a fine tea towel and strain the stock into a separate container.

Let the stock settle in the container - you will notice that any residual fish particles will have settled at the bottom – so for extra-clear stock, you can carefully ladle the clear stock into a separate container, leaving the sediments behind.

Taste the stock and season it to your taste with tamari soy sauce - miso works great too!

This stock is a delight and I regularly just sip on it on its own. You can store it for months by freezing it into ice cube trays – just don’t confuse it for regular ice cubes when adding it to your g&t!

If you’d like to prepare the dish in the picture, simply heat the stock back up and poach the squash and romanesco in it until they are just cooked but still have a nice bite to them, then add in the kale and the cleaned mussels and poach them gently until they open up. Serve with the pan-fried bass for a warming, bright meal.

For the ultimate bass fillet with crispy skin:

Use a flat-bottomed cast iron pan and get it smoking hot. Coat the bottom generously with British rapeseed oil and lay your fillets a in the pan skin-side down. Immediately start to press down the fillets with a fish slice so that the whole skin side is in contact with the pan.

Most of the cooking happens on the skin side so don’t be afraid to leave the fish in the pan for four or five minutes, until the edges of the flesh start turning from light pink to white. Don’t move the fillets until they easily comes off the pan, or you’ll risk breaking the skin.

Season the flesh side with flakey sea salt and black pepper, flip the fillets, remove from the heat, season the skin side and add in the seaweed flakes and the butter, which will melt and turn nutty with the residual heat. Spoon the butter over the fish, rest the fish for five minutes, then serve with the broth, vegetables and mussels.