23 December 2021

Pleasure.


From Fergus Henderson's The Complete Nose to Tail ...
SEVEN THINGS I SHOULD MENTION

When having lunch at Sweetings, you sit at a bar behind which a waiter is trapped, you order your smoked eel, they yell to a runner who delivers your eel over your shoulder to the waiter, who then places it under the counter and then in front of you as if they had it all along.  Not an entirely practical way of getting your food, but a splendid eating ritual, and a wonderful lunch.

"Nose to Tail" eating means it would be disingenuous to the animal not to make the most of the whole beast; there is a set of delights, textural and flavoursome, which lie beyond the fillet.

This is a book about cooking and eating at home with friends and relations, not replicating restaurant plates of food.

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.

The perfect recipe manages to steady and uplift at the same time.

One afternoon my flat was broken into.  The strange thing is, before I went out I had put a hare in the oven to braise, which filled the flat with delicious gamey smells.  I cannot help but think that it must have been very distracting to the burglar, the musk of the braising hare.

Unctuous potential: Trotter Gear is your gastronomical friend.

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