The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
by Fergus HendersonEcco, 224 pp., $19.95
First published in 1999 in Britain as Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking, this little gem became an instant food-lovers’ classic and was almost impossible to find on either side of the pond. Now republished in the U.S., it is unlike any cookbook that I know of.
Henderson trained as an architect but in 1994 founded the legendary St. John’s Restaurant in a former London smokehouse; his trademark cooking is the absolute antithesis of chefly, architectural food. His goal, as Anthony Bourdain raves in the introduction, is “simple, lovely, unassuming, and unpretentious food” based on traditional British farmhouse cooking. Henderson is committed to the patently reasonable idea that when you kill an animal for food, you ought to eat it all, “not just because it’s polite, but because it is all delicious.”
This is slow food at its most uncomplicated. However, Henderson’s respectfully brilliant approach is up against three major obstacles in this country’s presiding food culture: lack of time for preparing food, difficulty in obtaining such ingredients, and, not least, the standard American “yuck” response to any meat other than the major muscles.
To prepare meats from this book requires an uncommon degree of open-mindedness toward what constitutes good eating. It also requires a close relationship with a knowledgeable butcher (see Mick Vann’s primer on Austin meat markets, Jan. 30, austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-01-30/food_set.html) to acquire such ingredients as lamb’s tongue, pig’s tail, rabbit, pigeon, and all manner of giblets.
Henderson by no means confines himself to unusual meats. He has an equally extraordinary way with more common cuts, vegetables, and condiments; all his dishes cause you to look with new eyes at preparation, textures, and combining flavors. The salt-and-sugar-cured beef tenderloin (three days in the fridge) is one of the more amazing things I’ve ever put in my mouth.
Another example is the astonishing homemade celery salt that Henderson suggests eating with boiled eggs. (I can imagine any number of other applications.) Composed of only two ingredients (sea salt and grated celery root), the process takes two days in the refrigerator and then two hours in a very slow oven. The result is a flavor revelation.
Henderson’s dry voice in discussing his food is a reading pleasure and a source of both amusement and comfort. “Do not be afraid of cooking, as your ingredients will know and misbehave. Enjoy your cooking and the food will behave; moreover it will pass your pleasure on to those who eat it.”
This article appears in May 28 • 2004.
