The Hammock Papers: Bone.

10 December 2015

Bone.

After twenty years of serving roast bone marrow to his guests at St. John in London, chef Fergus Henderson has not lost his enthusiasm for the dish that has become shorthand for his aggressively humble style of cooking. While the bone marrow "has taken on a quality of its own" as an all-time classic, Henderson remains committed. "I suppose I'm married to the dish. It's very close to me." He adds: "There's never a dull moment between me and the bone."

Arguably the inspiration for basically every other bone marrow and toast dish on menus today — and a huge reason why there's so much bone marrow on menus now, period — the St. John roast bone marrow and parsley salad is the only dish to have been on the St. John menu continuously since the restaurant opened in October of 1994.

What attracts Henderson to serving roasted marrow bones is the physicality of it, the gnawing, the sucking, and the chewing of perfectly cooked bones. ("It's a bit cheeky," Henderson says of the plate.) The roasted bone marrow has not changed over the years. "It still gives such joy," he explains. "It always has."

Henderson's strategy is simple: "Celebrate the bone." To that end, marrow bones are cooked until precisely the right moment, paired with a thoughtful salad, toast, and then presented to the guest to attack as they will. The dish continues to captivate diners, and Henderson is modest when he says that "quite a few" tables order the bones each night. "The roasted bones, it's big."

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL