Cook a lot of little fish (3)
I believe the answer is:
fry
'cook' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'a lot of little fish' is the wordplay.
'a lot' means to remove the first letter (I've seen 'a lot of' mean this).
'little fish' becomes 'ry' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'of' with its initial letter taken off is 'f'.
'f'+'ry'='FRY'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for fry that I've seen before include "Young fish, especially when newly hatched" , "Newly-hatched fishes for the pan?" , "Newly-hatched fish" , "Cook in hot fat" , "Cook in oil" .)