"This is for me the new squid"

Exceptionally appealing writing in Christopher Hirst's Independent feature on fish:

Along with my kilo of Indian Ocean anchovies, I got a doctor fish, a moonfish, a pomfret and some homegrown treats in the form of razor clams, spiky sea-urchins, an ink-drenched cuttlefish and the X-rated geoducks, lolling in tumescent splendour like bivalve porn stars.

C J Jackson, director of the Billingsgate Seafood Training School and co-author of Leith's Fish Bible, briskly accomplished the cleaning of my catch. "The pomfret will need gutting," she said, peering round this plumpish, near-circular creature. "The guts are going to be ... here! As long as you can see the anal vent, you can find the guts." She said that most fish were fairly easy to deal with "as long as you get rid of the head and gills, the guts and the bloodline you'll be OK. I tend to cook fish on the bone. It's tastier, like meat on the bone." Her first step with the doctor fish was to snip off the fearsome scalpels.