Steadying.

In our house, this evening marks the beginning of Welsh Rarebit season, an ancient and sacred rite.

WELSH RAREBIT

Ingredients

• A knob of butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp Coleman's mustard powder
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 c Guinness
• A very long splash of Worcestershire sauce
• 1 lb. mature strong Cheddar, grated (Look for English farmhouse types such as Montgomery's, Keen's, Quicke's, or my favorite, Lincolnshire Poacher)
• 4 pieces of toast, preferably from homemade bread

Method

1. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, and let this cook together until it smells biscuity but is not browning. 
2. Add the mustard powder and cayenne pepper, stir in the Guinness and Worcestershire sauce, then gently melt in the cheese.
3. When it’s all of one consistency, remove from the heat, pour out into a shallow container and allow to set. Spread on toast thickly and place under the broiler. Eat when bubbling golden brown. 
4. This makes a splendid savoury at the end of your meal, washed down with a glass of Port, or as a steadying snack.

I highly recommend the addition of Nueske's Triple-Thick Butcher Cut bacon.

Repeat as needed.  Recipe courtesy of Fergus Henderson, from The Complete Nose to Tail

Thanks to Grandma Chenoweth.

Itself.

St. JOHN Bourgogne Blanc: “an excellent breakfast wine” says Fergus.
Us: “What breakfast dish would you eat with it?”
Fergus: “Oh, just on its own. It’s quite happy by itself” pic.twitter.com/6dHsLqcsaS

— St. JOHN Wines (@stjohnwine) March 28, 2018

Bone.

There's never a dull moment between me and the bone.

Travel'd.

The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist. 

William Blake

Pleasure.

Don’t 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.

Fergus Henderson, from The Complete Nose to Tail

Pleasure.

Don’t 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.

Fergus Henderson, Nose to Tail

Potential.

Lunch spells potential, whereas dinner is a full stop in the day. And what is breakfast, but a snack to tide you over while you think about lunch?

Fergus Henderson

Enormous.

Fergus Henderson, Trevor Gulliver, and education ...

At the heart of their relationship – which began through an introduction from an olive oil seller and, inevitably, a long lunch – is a shared faith in the sustaining joys of life. Both men are steeped in what you might call the rigour of gastronomic pleasure. The articles of St John’s faith are all about constancy and conviction, doing good things extremely well. When they first opened the restaurant, with its menu of tripes and bone marrow and welsh rarebit and addictive custard, they were accused of being 200 years out of date, which they took as an enormous compliment.

One of their key beliefs is that a great restaurant should insist on making a human shape to the day, beginning early with the baking of bread, and ending late with a final glass of something special. In an age of working lunches and clean eating, they have held fast to that principle. As a young man Henderson studied architecture – both his parents were architects – and he carried a profound understanding of structure into his eventual vocation. The foundations of that, he suggests to me as he works, were boyhood holidays to the Dordogne, where each morning the family would crack open the Michelin guide and ask the only two questions that ever really mattered: “Where shall we have lunch?” and “Where shall we have dinner?”

Live.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Oscar Wilde

Nailed.

Chef Henderson sings of breakfast ...

As you wake up in the morning and become aware of your innards and extremities you may require a late breakfast, but be careful - too late and we move into brunch territory, which is something we don't want to do. Brunch is the bastardisation of two great moments in the culinary day into a damp squib, neither one thing nor the other. Then there is the unanswered question: what do you drink with brunch? A wineless purgatory!

Continuing ...

But I've nailed my colours to the mast on this subject in the past, so let's return to breakfast and the breakfast greats. One, on a train travelling from Glasgow to London, with the view of the Lake District speeding past as you attack a brace of kippers and a glass of Guinness. It doesn't come much better (just remember the kipper-burps that stay with you a while, but nothing can be perfect). The next great breakfast: the Caffè Florian on St Mark's Square. The odd coffee, a chocolate ice-cream and a Fernet; we had to remortgage our house to pay the bill, of course, but what the hell - it's Venice. And then there was the time, many years ago, when I went to Prague with the Architectural Association before the Velvet Revolution. Wandering back to our hotel early in the morning we were met by a happy scene of folk eating freshly baked bread with coarse sea salt and drinking beer - not something you come across every day.

Sing along ...

An editorial note: A breakfast of creamed herring on rye bread with Guinness rules!

Mince.

FERGUS HENDERSON'S BEEF MINCE on TOAST

INGREDIENTS

Beef mince

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 1 medium leek, white and light green part only,  halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
• 1 medium carrot, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
• 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 pounds (910 g) ground (minced) chuck (20% fat)
• 2 canned whole plum tomatoes or ¼ cup (60 ml)  canned (tinned) chopped tomatoes
• ⅓ cup (30 g) rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce1½ cups (355 ml) dry red wine
• ¼ to ½ cup (60 to 120 ml) chicken stock or broth  (optional)
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 

Toast

• Four 3/4 inch (2 cm) thick slices Pullman loaf or wheat bread
• 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) beef drippings or pan sauce from a roast (or softened butter, in a pinch)

INSTRUCTIONS

To make the beef mince: 

1. In a large skillet (frying pan), heat the oil over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. 
2. Reduce the heat to medium and add the onion, leek, carrot, and garlic and cook, stirring often, until the onion is soft, 5–6 minutes. 
3. Crumble the beef into the pan and stir to mix it into the vegetables and break up the meat. Cook, stirring often, until the beef loses its pink color, 8–10 minutes
4. Crush the whole tomatoes in your hand and over the pan. 
5. While stirring, add the oats, followed by the Worcestershire sauce, and finally the wine. 
6. The sauce should be loose and thick (like lava); if the sauce is too thick, add enough chicken stock to make it lava-like. 
7. Stir in the salt and pepper, reduce the heat to low, and cook, stirring occasionally and adding stock if the pan goes dry, until the mixture looks rich and creamy and the fat separates out from the meat and rests at the surface of the mince, 1½–2 hours.

To make the toast: 

1. If you used the broiler (grill) method, leave the broiler on. Otherwise, adjust an oven rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat the broiler to high. 
2. Spread the beef drippings over one side of each slice, then place the toast on a foil-lined baking sheet and broil until bubbling, 1–2 minutes. 
3. Serve with the mince spooned over the toast.

Thanks, Mum.

Rigour.

St. John's Rules ...

"We just quietly go about our business," says Gulliver, coffee slopping over the side of his cup as he slaps the table. "We don't do vision." Henderson contemplatively sips his mid-morning madeira. "Yes, and there's still lots to do," he says. "There's always tweaking to be done." Better to list the things they don't believe in than those they do. Set menus? Not even when business is bad. Posh wines from around the world? France will suffice. Bawling out the staff? Not necessary. The lure of MasterChef? No, thanks. Finally, they come up with a word: rigour. "There is a rigour here," says Gulliver. "You have to be quite stubborn to do something like this."

CONNECT

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.

Squidge.

FERGUS' SARDINES on TOAST

You've had a proper dinner, but sometimes you might feel peckish before heading for bed. I once worked in a kitchen with a splendid chap called Charles Campbell, who always made himself sardines on toast at the end of the night. This he took to bed with him and ate in the dark, which he insisted was an essential part of the experience. It's also the perfect moment for a bedtime cuppa ... except we are eating in the dark, so the likelihood of third-degree burns from spilled tea is high. A much safer companion would be a dram of malt whisky, with which, hopefully, the only singe you will feel will be internal. Sorry, we somehow got through the day without so much as a sip of tea passing our lips.

INGREDIENTS

• Good brown bread
• Butter
• 1 tin good-quality sardines in oil
• Lemon

PROCEDURE

1. Toast and butter the bread
2. Squidge the sardines on to the toast with a fork
3. Squeeze over the lemon
4. Devour.

Steadying.

Evenings at this point in the Oyster Months find this house engaged in the ancient and sacred rite of the Welsh Rarebit, well-repeated as needed ...

WELSH RAREBIT

Ingredients

• A knob of butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp Coleman's mustard powder
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1c. Guinness
• A very long splash of Worcestershire sauce
• 1lb. mature strong Cheddar, grated
• 4 pieces of toast

Method

1. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, and let this cook together until it smells biscuity but is not browning. Add the mustard powder and cayenne pepper, stir in the Guinness and Worcestershire sauce, then gently melt in the cheese.
2. When it’s all of one consistency, remove from the heat, pour out into a shallow container and allow to set. Spread on toast 1cm thick and place under the grill. Eat when bubbling golden brown. 
3. This makes a splendid savoury at the end of your meal, washed down with a glass of Port, or a steadying snack.

Recipe courtesy of Fergus Henderson, from The Complete Nose to Tail

Clouds.

St. John Bread & Wine ...

The crunchy layers of confit potatoes fried in duck fat, the freshness of the cress, the rich yolk running over the clouds of smoked cod's roe. The hen's egg winks to the eggs of the fish. Fertile ground.  

Ages.

From St. John Bread & Wine ...

Fergus notes that experienced chefs develop a sixth sense for toast; that once slices are lain on a hot grill, you can busy yourself with other tasks and, at the exact moment that the toast acquires the ideal stripes of almost-but-not-quite-too-well-done, your senses prick from across the kitchen. It is ready.

Perhaps you tune in to the almost imperceptible waft of the perfect singe mingling with the other kitchen smells. Perhaps the slices of ages have given you a perfect internal timer. 

CONNECT

Pleasure.

Don’t 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.

Fergus Henderson, from The Complete Nose to Tail

Henderson's St. John Bread & Wine ...

Beef mince on duck fat toast ...

The technique is HERE.

Pops.

A pool of pan juices, nutty with brown butter and bright with lemon. The sharp pops of tiny capers ...

CONNECT

Gunge.

Fergus Henderson hints at Scotch Woodcock ...

Be gentle with your egg and hopefully it will be gentle to you. Scrambling, for example, should be a slow process, done on low heat with a good knob of butter in the pan. Crack your eggs into the melting butter and gently stir, breaking the yolks. Don't season with salt until the end - it will throw the scrambling out of kilter - and don't lose your nerve and turn the heat up to try to rush things; just stir them occasionally.

When they're cooked to a satisfactory state, you can't do much better than serving your scrambled eggs on buttered toast, but let's go a step further into the world of savouries. Traditionally, savouries were offered at the end of the meal - not a sweet, though, and accompanied by a glass of Port. My favourite savoury is Scotch woodcock. For ours at St John we make an anchovy gunge which is then spread on toast and topped with scrambled eggs. Some prefer the anchovies whole and the eggs poached. This neatly leads us into the world of the poached egg, a very useful culinary bubble on top of smoked haddock and steamed green asparagus and corned beef hash that magically creates its own sauce.

CONNECT 

The proper recipe can be found in Fergus' latest, The Book of St. John ...

The "savoury" is a rather old-fashioned course, taken with a glass or port at te end of a meal.  This family grouping includes not only the Scotch Woodcock but Welsh Rarebit and the Buck Rarebit, too, which is a rarebit with a poach egg on top.  It's not often that you fancy such a thing after your dessert.

Throw away the shackles of antiquated convention!  Liberate the Scotch Woodcock from its after-dinner perdition!  Take a well-spread piece of anchovy toast -- a good white bread is preferable -- and cover with creamy, lightly-scrambled eggs.  Your breakfast is ready.

The anchovy gunge.

INGREDIENTS

7 garlic cloves, peeled

a pinch of black pepper

1 tin of anchovies in oil (Ortiz)

225 ml extra virgin olive oil

a splash or red wine vinegar

PREPARATION 

1. Place the garlic and pepper into a food processor (or use a pestle and mortar if you have time and energy), and crush to a fine purée, then add the anchovies and allow them to break down. Start to add the oil, then the vinegar to taste. Check flavour for seasoning.
2. This dressing, depending on how thick you make it, can have many uses.
3. With less oil and vinegar added you will have a very firm mix - the Anchovy Gunge - which you can use as a dip for vegetables (as here), or spread it on toast with sweet roasted or pickled shallots, or a boiled egg. 
4. With a little more oil and vinegar added you should have a looser, though still emulsified mixture, which is ideal for dressing boiled greens or broccoli - which can be eaten on their own or with lamb or beef.