If a fish-head can look baleful the one that I picked up this morning did it stuck in the bottom of my stockpot and waiting for me to add onions and carrots, salt, peppercorns, bay leaf and water to make up a good fish stock.

There is no point going without fish stock. If you are cooking fish you need to go to the fishmonger so ask him if he has a fish-head or bones for making stock. Most of them will and if they don’t then maybe it is time to think about a different fishmonger.

The fish-stock is going to be used in the making of a seafood fideus. Fideus is a Catalonian paella made with small noodle shaped pieces of pasta rather than rice. I spotted the pasta in the back of a cupboard and thought that it needed eating up. I had bought it last year when we had a Spanish student staying with us for a few days and I was wanting to make her something that might remind her of home.

On the moment there are some onions cooking down in a wide iron pan. Once they are brown and sweet I will add a couple of chopped tomatoes and some garlic and then monkfish prawns. That will all get stirred round for a few minutes and then monkfish and prawns will go in and get stirred round some more. Then the pasta which will needed to be covered in the sauce before the stock is ladled in and it all left to cook through for about twenty five minutes.

Finally I have a handful of clams that I will cook separately and then dot over the top.

Listening to John Cale and The Velvet Underground.