The idea of cooking fish in sealed parcels of kitchen foil (aluminium foil) is not a new one, but it is a very effective way of preparing fish without overcooking, while being able to add various interesting flavours.

Here's a favourite of mine, which can be prepared with almost any white fish, as well as salmon fillets or even tuna. This works best with boneless fillets, with the skin left on. Most recently, I've been making this with Halibut, which is particularly good.

Wash and trim the fish fillets as necessary. Add a little salt to the skin side only. Rip off large pieces of foil, and form into open-topped cartons. Arrange in a large baking tray. Put a splash of good-quality olive oil into each parcel.

Add a fish fillet to each parcel, skin side down. Then add some fine-chopped fresh root ginger, some finely-chopped spring onions, a few thin slices of hot pepper, the juice of half a lemon, and a little freshly-ground black pepper. Garnish each fish with a slice of lemon.

Seal up each parcel. Stick in a pre-heated oven at 200 Celcius for about 12 minutes - you may need to vary this depending on the thickness of the fish. To serve, open each parcel and slide the fish onto a plate, adding some or all of the juices. I like to serve this with a mixed green salad, served in a separate bowl, and a few boiled new potatoes flavoured with cardamon.

This is another simple dish, which can be particularly tasty as a light dinner on a summer evening. The current fashion is to cook tuna so that it is still pink in the middle. I'm not so fond of this, so this approach ensures that the fish is cooked through without getting dried out.

Wash and trim the tuna steaks. Heat the griddle nice and hot, and wipe over with a very little vegetable oil. Sprinkle one side of the tuna with freshly-ground black pepper, and slap onto the griddle pepper-side down. Let cook for three minutes, while adding black pepper to the upper side of the fish.

Another fish-n-pasta recipe which is quick-n-easy. Quite light and low-fat, suitable for a mid-week dinner for two.

You'll need about 200 grams of scallops, with or without roes. Separate and clean roes and flesh. I like to use queen scallops for this; if you have king scallops then slice the flesh in half so that it cooks very quickly.

Heat up the griddle, wiping the surface with just a little vegetable oil. You could use a heavy frying pan instead.

Cook enough pasta for two people, following the instructions on the packet. Make sure you put plenty of salt and a little olive oil in the water, to prevent it from sticking. Drain the pasta and place in two dishes, and keep warm.

Meanwhile, dissolve a fish stock cube and a vegetable stock cube in about a quarter of a pint of water, in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil, and make sure the cubes are completely dissolved. Now add a good slug of white wine and boil until reduced by half - the result should be quite a thick liquid.

Stir in a tablespoon of pesto from a jar - one with lots of basil in it. Also, stir in 50 grams of butter straight from the fridge - stir vigourously until the butter is all melted and the sauce is creamy. Add a good dose of freshly-ground black pepper.

Throw the scallops on the hot griddle. Sizzle! Move then around with a spatula until they are just cooked - this should take a matter of seconds. Serve the scallops on the pasta, covered with the sauce. Serve immediately.

This is a classic "winter warmer" fish pie, made with boneless fillets of firm-fleshed white fish (cod or haddock, for example), but with peeled prawns added for extra interest. It works well without the prawns, if you prefer.

The secret of success is carefully cleaning and selecting the Mussels. Under running water from the cold tap, scrape each mussel clean, including the dangling green "beards". You must discard any mussel which is open - it will be off, and definitely not good for you! Put the cleaned mussels in a large bowl of fresh water and rinse well.

You will need a large pan with a tight-fitting lid. An ordinary saucepan will do, but there are special pans available with a particularly deep lid, which can be used to serve at the table - the lid doubles as a repository for the empty shells.

Melt a teaspoon of butter with a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan. Peel and finely slice three shallots, or perhaps half a medium onion. Cook the shallots gently in the oil and butter for perhaps 5 minutes until soft.

To the shallots add half a bottle of dry white wine - I use the cheapest stuff I can find for this, or at least some left-overs from a party.

Also add half a teaspoon of dried parsley, and half a teaspoon of dried thyme, and a dried bayleaf. If you can get fresh herbs, so much the better: wash and chop very finely before adding. Add some freshly-ground black pepper and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Stir the salt and pepper around for a few minutes - the peppercorns will crack and spit a little while you do this. Then, remove from the heat, all to cool for a couple of minutes, then pour the whole lot into a pestle and mortar.

Add a teaspoon of Chinese Five-spice powder (from a jar). Grind the salt, pepper and spice jix to a fine powder using the pestle and mortar.

Sprinkle all but a teaspoon of the spicy powder over the squid pieces and rub in - use your fingers! Then add two tablespoons of light soy sauce, a teaspoon of caster sugar and a tablespoon of Chinese rice wine (dry sherry or even white wine vinegar will do at a pinch!). Stir all the ingredients together, cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge for an hour or so.

The squid should be cooked just before it is to be served, so that it is really fresh. Half-fill a wok (could be the same one you used earlier - no need to wash it up!) or large saucepan with cooking oil - you will need at least half a pint. Heat it up to medium heat - about 180C.

Pour off the marinade from the squid, and sprinkle in a heaped tablespoon of cornflour. Stir well, to make sure the squid is completely coated with the flour.

For this one, you need Sea Bass fillets - boneless, but with the skin left on. Sea Bass is a delightfully-flavoured fish and so you need to be very careful with the seasoning.

Wash the fillets and place them skin-side-up on a board. Sprinkle the skins with a little salt - this will help the skins to separate from the flesh after they are served.

Get a shallow ceramic oven-proof dish and wipe the surface with a little olive oil. Place the fish in the dish, skin side down. Sprinkle the fillets with the juice of half a lemon and a very little finely-ground black pepper.

Cover the dish with aluminium foil and put it in a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes at 200C (Gas Mark 6).

Serve the fillets in the dish they were cooked in, perhaps garnished with a sprig of flat-leaf parsley. Serve with Saffron Potatoes and a green salad.

The first thing to do is to boil the eggs. You will need five eggs for two people, for a light lunch or dinner. You could also serve this dish as a starter, allowing three eggs per two people. Use the best-quality eggs you can afford.

This is another light and tasty way of cooking salmon, and works best with skin-on boneless fillets.

Wash the fillets and place them skin-side up on a plate. Dust the skin with ground ginger, freshly-ground black pepper and a little salt. (This makes it easy to remove the skin at the table.)

Put a tablespoon of olive oil and knob of butter in a medium-sized frying-pan, and set on the stove to get nice and hot.

Slice a lemon in half and cut a thick round from each half. Squeeze the juice from the remaining ends.

Put the salmon fillets in the oil and butter, skin-side down, and cook for three minutes. Then turn the fillets over, and add the lemon slices to the pan. Then pour the lemon juice over the fish as it cooks. Cook for a further three minutes.

In a second, large frying-pan (a wok works well), heat up another tablespoon of oil. When really hot, stir-fry a large handful of greens (any leftover mixed salad leaves works well, or you could use spinach) for just a few seconds, until the leaves are all wilted.

Another simple way to serve Tuna steaks. This works better in a large frying pan rather than on the griddle, since the juices tend to bubble up during cooking.

First, mix up the marinade. Use a screw-top jar - the kind of thing that once held jam, or pickles. In the jar, put a teaspoon of brown sugar, a tablespoon of dark soy sauce, a tablespoon of Chinese or Japanese rice vinegar, and a tablespoon of sake (or dry sherry). Put the top on the jar - carefully! - and shake hard until all of the sugar is dissolved.

Wash the Tuna steaks and place in a shallow dish just big enough to hold them. Pour the shaken marinade over the fish, then cover the dish with clingfilm and leave in the fridge for half an hour.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan with a teaspoon of vegetable oil (no more). Add a drop or two of sesame oil (optional). When the pan and oil are hot, slap in the tuna steaks. Cook on one side for about three minutes, adding a tablespoon or two of the marinade as the fish cooks. Then turn the fish over, and cook for another two minutes, adding the remaining marinade.

This works quite nicely with Dirty Rice, or perhaps with Thai-style Rice Noodles.

Bouillabaisse is one of those recipes that seems to have a million variations, all of which seem have some claim to ultimate authenticity associated with them. So, here's my variation, which comes out differently every time I make it - mainly because I use whatever fish is available - but has absolutely no claim to authenticity whatsoever.

You should use whatever fish can be bought fresh (and cheap!) from the shops or market. I like to use (at least) a firm colourful fish like salmon, a cheap white fish such as cod or river cobbler, some large prawns, and some shellfish such as scallops. All of the fish should be filleted and skinned, and the shellfish should be free of tails and shells - so you don't have to fight with them at the table!

Clean and separate the corals from the scallops, and slice the meat into two or three thin slices. Marinate in a little salt, pepper and the juice of half a lemon. Similarly, clean the prawns and marinate in a separate bowl. Wash the other fish and cut into even-sized, fairly large pieces.

In a large saucepan, put four tablespoons of olive oil. Add a finely-sliced onion and a sliced stick of celery. Cook very gently on the cooker for five minutes, stiring continuously. Then, add a couple of cloves of garlic, also very finely sliced and cook for a further three minutes. The vegetables should be soft but not browned.

Add the following to the saucepan: three small potatoes, sliced thinly - much more thinly than you would normally choose for potatoes; a tin of chopped tomatoes; a fish stock cube dissolved in half a pint of water; a dried bayleaf; a pinch of dried thyme (optional); the grated rind of half an orange (optional), and a few strands of Saffron (not optional - this is what gives the dish its characteristic taste!).

Bring the contents of the saucepan to the boil and simmer for about ten minutes - the potatoes should be getting close to being cooked before you add any of the fish. Add a pinch of salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper.

One thing I like to add at this point is a splash of some aniseed-flavoured spirit. I'm sure everyone has a bottle of Sambucca or Ouzo or Pernod that they brought back with them from a seaside vacation. These drinks are fine when combined with iced water and sipped while sheltering from a blazing Mediterranean sun, at a bar overlooking an azure sea, but they do not quite have same effect on a cold wet windy winter evening in Burnley.

The traditional accompaniment for Bouillabaisse. Be warned - this contains raw garlic and chillies and is not for the faint-hearted!

Put two or three cloves of garlic in a blender or small food processor, and add one (or two, if you must!) small red chillies. Whizz up for a few moments.

Cut the crusts from a slice of white bread and chop into chunks. Add the pieces to the food processor. Add a tablespoon of fish stock - if you are making Bouillabaisse then reserve a little for this purpose. Whizz up again.

Add a tablespoon of good-quality olive oil to the blender. Whizz thoroughly. Repeat twice more, until you have a smooth orangy-red paste. Tip into a small bowl to serve.

We recently took an early morning trip to the New Smithfield fish market near Manchester, and bought a couple of very fresh - and very large - Dover Sole. I cooked this recipe for Tracey with one fish, and she liked it so much she insisted I cook it again the following night with the other fish!

This recipe needs skin-on fillets of a flat white fish such as Dover Sole or Lemon Sole. If you're not sure how to fillet a fish (this is a bit tricky!) then buy fillets or get your fishmonger to fillet them for you. A single fish should provide enough for two or three portions, depending on size.

Melt an ounce of butter in a large frying pan. When it is bubbling nicely, stick in the fillets, skin side down. Cook for four minutes over a high heat, then turn over and cook for a further one minute. Don't be tempted to over-cook the fish, since it will spoil the flavour.

Another salmon-and-pasta combination, but this time a way of using up any left-over smoked salmon. I like to use Farfalle (bow-tie shapes) pasta for this one.

Cook the pasta in the usual way following the timing on the packet, then drain and allow to cook slightly.

While the pasta is cooking, chop up 100 grams (or more) of smoked salmon. Little strips about 1/4 inch wide and maybe an inch long seem to work best.

In a large non-stick saucepan, melt an ounce of butter and stir in the juice of half a lemon. Heat until the butter is bubbling nicely, toss in the chopped salmon and warm for ten seconds, then add the cooked pasta. Stir gently, and then add three (or more) tablespoons of double cream and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper.

Stir carefully until the whole dish is nicely warm, then transfer to two warmed bowls. Grate a little Parmesan cheese over each bowl and serve immediately.

Tagine is a cooking style from North Africa, and also the name of a cooking pot (a bit like casserole). The pot has a circular base and a conical lid. You can use a conventional casserole dish as an alternative.

Tagine dishes are usually based on meats such as lamb, which are very tasty, but this version uses boneless fish fillets, which are spectacularly good. Any firm-fleshed white fish will be fine; I have tried both cod and haddock, which work well.

First, make the marinade. This is much easier with a small food processor or blender. Deseed a green chilli, peel 2 cloves of garlic and put all this in the processor with a teaspoon of dried coriander, two teaspoons of cumin and one teaspoon of chilli powder. (You might care to use more or less chilli powder, depending on how spicy you like your food.) Grate the rind from a lemon (wash it first!) into the blender - keep the rest of the lemon for later. Whizz the whole lot for a few moment, then add a tablespoon of vegetable oil, then whizz again.

Wash the fish, then cut into pieces about an inch on a side. Put the chunks of fish in a bowl, add the marinade, mix gently (use your fingers!), then cover the bowl with cling film and stick in the fridge for an hour (or overnight).

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables. Roughly slice a large onion (red onions works well in this recipe, although you may need two smaller ones) and put in a small frying pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Cook this very slowly and gently for 10 minutes or so. The idea is to get the onion nice and soft, but not browned in any way.