I’ve always loved cooking and preparing seafood; mind you, I’ve done my fair share of it. When I first started out at The Waterside Inn in Berkshire, England, I was assigned to fish butchery — long hours gutting, skinning and filleting fish, pretty much day in, day out, for six months. But these were the tools I needed to understand and respect the produce I was given.

In keeping with the theme of this book, I wanted to keep this chapter quite fun and relaxed, with most of the recipes designed for small bites and sharing.

For this chapter in particular, we’ve included dishes that are currently on our Salt tapas menus, some of which are so popular we just can’t take them off; the prawn tempura tortillas with pineapple salsa (here) and salt cod croquettes with piccalilli (here) have always had our customers asking for more.

We’ve also put a bit of an Asian twist on a few classics — prawn toasts with smoked corn salsa and chipotle (here) and lobster milk buns with Vietnamese slaw (here) — and included some travel-inspired dishes, such as our grilled sardines with green tomato chutney and radish salad (here) and marinated anchovies with pico de gallo (here).

I hope you enjoy sharing these dishes as much as we do.