Something fishy with Simon Rhodes from Lobsterpot Fishmongers, Wood Street Food Hall

SALTINESS is one the basic human tastes and is essential for human life.

Lately salt has been given a bad reputation for being over-used in everyday foods.

However, salt is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous seasonings, and salting is an important method of food preservation.

It has been around for many centuries and was used widely by the Romans, the Greeks and even as far back as the ancient Hebrews.

We now produce 200m tonnes of salt every year but surprisingly we only use six per cent for human consumption.

While people have used canning and artificial refrigeration to preserve food for the last 100 years or so, salt has been the best-known food preservative, especially for meat and fish, for many thousands of years.

From a chef’s point of view salt enhances the flavour of food and gives it a deeper all-round taste. However the skill is not to over season.

In many East Asian cultures, salt is not traditionally used as a condiment. In its place, condiments such as soy sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce tend to have a high sodium content and fill a similar role. They are most often used for cooking rather than as table condiments.

Cooking fish in a salt crust may seem a bit scary but is in fact quite easy and is extremely popular in Spain.

It’s just a matter of placing the fish on top of a bed of salt and patting a layer of salt over it — the salt seals in the juices, but amazingly doesn’t overwhelm the fish with a salty taste. Present the whole salt-crusted fish at the table which gives good theatre to the diners.

To prepare a salt crust, combine salt, water and herbes de Provence in a bowl. Mix until it’s the consistency of wet sand. Spread half the salt mixture on a prepared baking sheet in a rectangle just larger than the fish. Place the sea bass on and cover it with the salt making sure there are no gaps. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Remove the sea bass from the oven and break open the crust and carefully remove the skin to reveal the delicate, soft flesh of the fish which can be filleted or eaten off the bone. Accompany with hollandaise sauce or melted lemon butter.