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Cotriades are excellent food for large parties or people. One cooking pot to watch (and wash up), the simplest of preparations which means that everyone can help, and a lavish result after a short cooking time. The only possible mistake is to overcook the fish. Provide a great deal of butter to eat with the fish and potatoes. (Breton butter is often salted, unlike Normandy butter which is too softly creamy for this kind of food.) Failing butter, a vinaigrette will do instead. Provide plenty of bread, too, and toast some of it lightly for the soup. Another essential item is a bottle of full-bodied red wine.

Simone Morand so feelingly implores her readers not to cut off the heads of the fish, that I’m reminded of a Chinese cookery writer who declared that Westerners missed something through feeling unable to look at a fish with its head on, ‘they miss experiencing the delicate taste of fish head’. True.

COTRAIDE DES BORDS DE LA RANCE

Serves 6

2 onions, chopped

1 spoonful of lard

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 kg (2 lb) potatoes, quartered

chervil, parsley, chives in quantity

salt, pepper

2 medium mackerel, 3 gurnard, piece of conger eel sliced, 2 whiting, 1 bream

COTRIADE FROM CORNOUAILLE

Serves 6

1 onion, chopped

lump of lard or butter

good handful of sorrel

1 kg (2 lb) potatoes, sliced

bouquet garni

salt, pepper

1 gurnard, 1 red mullet, 1 garfish, cod etc.

Cook the onion in the fat until it is lightly browned. Add vegetables, herbs and seasoning, and scant 2 litres (3 pt) of water. Cover the pan, and simmer until the potatoes are almost cooked, then add the fish, cut into chunks. Add more water if necessary to cover all the ingredients. Bring back to the boil, and simmer for a further 10 minutes until the fish is cooked, but not overcooked.

COTRIADE FROM BELLE-ÎLE

Serves 6

firm fish – conger, mackerel, pollack, saithe

soft fish – sardines, skate, cod, ballan wrasse, etc.

shellfish – crawfish, lobster, crabs of various kinds, mussels, shrimps

1 kg (2 lb) potatoes, sliced

4 onions, sliced

6 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped

1 stalk of celery, chopped

white part of 2 or 3 leeks, chopped

salt, pepper

parsley, chervil, thyme, bay leaf

pinch of saffron

tumbler of olive oil or melted butter

The method is slightly different for this feast. First season and cut up the various fish. Put the firm-fleshed ones on a plate with crawfish, lobster and crab. Put the soft-fleshed ones on another plate with mussels and shrimps or prawns. Pour the oil or butter over both piles. Leave while the vegetables cook in plenty of water, with seasoning, herbs and saffron. When the potatoes are nearly done, add the firm-fleshed fish etc. Boil hard for 5 minutes exactly. Add the soft-fleshed fish, etc., and boil hard for another 5 minutes. Not a moment longer. Serve separately in the usual way, after correcting the seasoning of the soup.

BOUILLABAISSE, BOURRIDE AND CACCIUCCO

These Mediterranean stews have an air of romantic gastronomy about them. Their reality is in fact as simple as Atlantic chaudrées and chowders. The cook assembles whatever freshly caught fish he can, stews them in water with vegetables, embellishes them with such grace notes as the district can offer, and serves the whole thing up with bread. Of course if the local fish include lobster, John Dory and squid, the local vegetables huge sweet tomatoes and onions, and the grace notes olive oil, saffron and garlic, the stew is likely to be a winner.

At the opposite end of existence, it can be perfectly disgusting. A friend told me recently that his grandmother once went into a dark cottage in the Highlands of Scotland. There she saw a woman, apparently alone except for a cow, stirring a pot over the fire. In a few moments she poured the contents of the pot on to a pile of heather in front of the hearth. And from a shadowy hole in the wall darted two filthy children, who grabbed as many potatoes and raggy herrings as they