Peppery fish quite dry on the inside (5)
I believe the answer is:
ratty
'peppery' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'fish quite dry on the inside' is the wordplay.
'fish quite' becomes 'ray' (ray is a kind of fish. I am not sure about the 'quite' bit.**).
'dry' becomes 'tt' (abbreviation for teetotal).
'on the inside' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'ray' placed around 'tt' is 'RATTY'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ratty that I've seen before include "with hump?" , "with pests" , "Irritable (informal)" , "water vole, literally" , "Characteristic of pest" .)