Perhaps it's a pain having to eat trout's head for starters (9)
I believe the answer is:
antipasti
'for starters' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'perhaps it's a pain having to eat trout's head' is the wordplay.
'perhaps' is an anagram indicator.
'it' becomes ''t' (abbreviation. e.g. in 'tis).
'having' becomes 'asi' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'to eat' is an insertion indicator.
'head' says to take the initial letters.
The first letter of 'trouts' is 't'.
'asi' going around 't' is 'asti'.
't'+'pain'='tpain'
'tpain' is an anagram of 'antip'.
'antip'+'asti'='ANTIPASTI'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for antipasti that I've seen before include "that's served in trattoria" , "starters in Rome" , "Italian appetizers" , "Italian eats" , "Italian food selection" .)