Seafood Made Simple: My one-pot monkfish chasseur is inspired by childhood dinners

Benefits of keeping fish on the bone

Here I’m using thick chunks of monkfish cut across the tail bone which produce a sauce with real gusto and a dish with striking presentation. Picture: Chani Anderson

I spend hours every week making sure portions of fish are free from bones, oysters are without shell fragments and mussels are without grit. The undesirable bone that ended up in your dinner when you were five might have ruined your future self enjoying the delicious food sources that surround our island country.

We are lucky enough to have trepidatious fish eaters dine in our restaurant, so these details are major for our kitchen team hoping to convert the wary to fully-fledged seafood lovers. We rarely serve fish on the bone; we like to do all the work for the customer. But some species work particularly well when cooked on the bone, although they might be marginally more laborious when eating; Dover sole of course being the most common.