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

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."

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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. 

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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 ...

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Fish.

Fergus Henderson's Fish Pie ...

INGREDIENTS

Fish

• 3 fillets smoked haddock
• 10 black peppercorns
• 3  ⅓ c. milk
• 1 stick plus 2 T. butter
• ¾ c. all-purpose flour
• sea salt and black pepper
• 4 10-minute hard-boiled eggs

Potatoes

• 3½ lb. potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
• 3⅓ c. milk
• 1 stick plus 2 tablespoon butter
• sea salt and black pepper

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In an ovenproof dish, cover the smoked haddock and peppercorns with the milk and bake in a medium to hot oven for approximately 20 minutes. Check the fish has cooked through; it should easily flake when prodded with a knife. Remove it from the milk, strain and save the milk, and flake the fish flesh off their skins into hearty bite-size chunks.
2. Meanwhile boil and mash potatoes with the milk, butter and seasoning. 
3. While this happens, melt 10 tablespoons of the butter in a pan, and when it’s starting to bubble, add the flour and stir until the mixture smells biscuity (this suggests the flour is cooked), but do not let the mixture change color. There must be no browning at all, so be cautious with the heat. 
4. Add the warm fish milk, whisking to avoid lumps. Thicken until it easily coats the back of a spoon and check for seasoning. (Ed.- Add a shot of Pernod at this point)
5. In a pie dish place haddock and hard-boiled eggs. Add fish sauce, leaving room to top with layer of mashed potato. 
6. Run a fork across the top of the mash, as if ploughing a field. This is not for mere decoration, but aids the crisping factor. (Ed.- Dip the fork in olive oil before ploughing)
7. Dot the top with little knobs of butter, place the pie in a hot oven, and cook for 30 minutes or until piping hot and golden brown. 
8. Serve with boiled peas.

Steadying.

Welsh Rarebit, from Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail Eating 

To feed six

Ingredients

A knob of butter

1 T flour

1 t English mustard powder

½ t cayenne pepper

7 oz. Guinness

A very long splash of Worcestershire sauce

1 lb. mature strong Cheddar, grated

4 pieces of toast

Method

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.

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. 

This makes a splendid savoury at the end of your meal, washed down with a glass of Port, or a steadying snack.

Feast.

Musk.

Roast Dexter, Chanterelles and Bone Marrow. Deeply pink, tender and melting. Rich and nourishing with late Autumn musk.

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Powerful.

Beef Tartare on Dripping Toast with Bone Marrow, for moments when you are in need of some fortification. The fat soothes, the Dexter beef strengthens, the toast comforts, the cornichons and capers uplift. Powerful magic.

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Relish.

It’s dark outside and you haven’t even left work. But! Grilled Kid Liver and Green Sauce awaits you at Bread and Wine tonight. With a glass of @stjohnwine Pinot Noir, perhaps... or a bottle, if you have a friend or a lover with whom to relish these long evenings.

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