The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
by Fergus Henderson
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Book Reviews of The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
Book Review: Delicious Indictment of our Wastefulness
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to start by saying that I can prepare only ten of the thirty-four recipes in the meat section of this cookbook without special ordering, and thirteen are virtually impossible due to unavailability of ingredients. Lamb tongues? Pig tails? Quarts of pig blood? Lamb hearts? Forget it. I live near a large butcher who can't or won't provide any of these items for any price I can pay. They go to the dogfood plants. This is a pity, as anyone lucky enough to have eaten the flavorful extremities and innards of young animals can attest. Our American supermarket meat counters have for years whittled down the selection in favor of the most flavorless cuts: fillet mignon and chicken breast have taken the shelf space once dedicated to the "set of delights, textural and flavorsome, which lie beyond the fillet", to quote author Fergus Henderson. As our cultural memory of the flavors of the parsimonious and creative farmhouse kitchen shrivels, our food is impoverished. Henderson writes a sharp critique of our culture of waste, but only as the byproduct of his central thesis: that there is a world of pleasure out there for those who set aside their suburban sqeamishness and eat the whole beast.
Among the few recipes I can follow without unconscionable substitutions are some real gems. Tripe and Onions, remarkably similar to French, Italian, Spanish, and even Mexican preparations, is delicious. Rabbit and Garlic is a powerfully aromatic feast. Beans and Bacon is a perfect rustic dish, a worthy simplification that could stand for cassoulet. Ox Tongue and Bread, really a carpaccio or hearty salad, is an excellent meal on its own, great with a simple and light red table wine. Each time I've prepared a dish from this book, I've lamented the narrow-minded marketing that makes most of the book inaccessible.
My laments are accompanied by shameless keening when I get to the Birds and Game section. Almost nothing in this section is possible here. A shame, really. Some of these recipes make great reading. But so did Don Quixote, and I'm not any more able to get fresh pigeon [without a good slingshot] than I am able to book a flight to medieval Spain. This highlights the real perversity of this book: af all the many cookbooks in my library, representing such far-flung cuisines as Indian, Turkish, and West African, the most exotic is from my ancestral England, from a chef who speaks something very like my own language, and whose ingredients sound, but for the specific location of their cuts, very familiar. How far we've come without true progress!
Go to the meat counter and test this assertion: our culture values two characteristics above all others in meat: softness and blandness. Now consider what we're missing: the heady pleasures of the most flavorful cuts of meat, skillfully prepared and simply served. Somewhere along the way we've abandoned a great cultural inheritance. It takes an act of will to remember that abundance has cost us dearly.
I wish I had the means to distribute this excellent book like a religious tract. It will take something like religious fervor on the part of a few brave souls to get us back to the roots of our cooking: farm and field.
Book Review: The Ultimate Healthy Diet
Summary: 5 Stars
Kudos to The Whole Beast by Fergus Henderson. This unusual cookbook is dedicated to recipes on organ meats. The delicious array includes warm pig's head, ox tongue, roast bone marrow, calf's heart, brawn (headcheese), jellied tripe, rolled pig's spleen, duck neck terrine, duck hearts on toast, many recipes for lamb's brain, sweet breads, blood cake (made with 1 quart of pig's blood), pig's cheek and tongue, gratin of tripe, haggis, deviled kidneys, lamb's kidneys and giblet stew. The one notable omission is steak and kidney pie.
The recipes are exotic (or so they seem to us-they were once standard fare for Britons) but also simple. Henderson's signature dish is Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad, which calls for marrowbone, parsley, shallots and capers, with a dressing of lemon juice and olive oil-that's all. The ingredient list for Duck Hearts on Toast is minimal: duck hearts, chicken stock, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, butter and toast.
Many pages are devoted to preserving meats, including an intriguing recipe for dried salted pig's liver. Others include brine-cured pork belly, corned ox tongue, cured beef or venison, pickled herring and a variety of animal parts preserved in rendered fat.
And the book contains other treasures: many recipes for game birds, rabbit, venison, crab, eel, mussels and salt cod; creative vegetable concoctions, wonderful soups and unusual salads.
Henderson understands the value of stocks, makes pastry crust with suet and uses real butter and cream.
Henderson includes no discussion of the health benefits of the foods he serves, but with the exception of white sugar used in a few dessert recipes, and white bread crumbs in a few soups recipes, The Whole Beast is the quintessential health food cookbook; its principles will confer more beauty, strength and happiness on mankind than the thousands of fatuous lowfat tomes that lecture us about the evils of rich diets and promise the mecca of good health on a diet of skinless chicken breasts and soy smoothies.
Critics contend that Henderson's food is too extreme for Americans. Henderson replies: "My experience is that every time someone comes to the kitchen at St. John to say how much they enjoyed our Pig's Head or Rolled Spleen, they are always American, so I have no doubt that the strong gastronomic spirit of adventure in the United States will carry them through the recipes in this book."
Whether you are a timid eater or a courageous one, this book needs to be in your kitchen, and not kept pristine on the shelf, but reverently used. You'll need to find a real butcher or a farmer to obtain many of the basic ingredients, which is all the better, because as we learn to eat the whole beast, we hasten the revolution that is underway in America: the return to real food produced on real farms.
Review by Sally Fallon
Book Review: Explore the Beast
Summary: 5 Stars
Nose to Tail Eating is an exploration in a culinary code that has only emerged in my consciousness and that of many others in the last several years. Clocking in at only a quarter of a century, creative uses of offal were not common occurance in my household, in fact they did not exist. That was enough to give me pause when looking at a few of the books recipes, cold lambs brain on toast, jellied tripe and of course warm pigs head. Even though I may have had bits of these before, cabeza tacos, tripe in my pho, etc; taking bits, pieces, heads only really seen in elementary school dissections and prepping them for dinner can be intially jarring. But this leads to the brilliance of Hendersons The Whole Beast. You see his signiture dish, Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad, is not only simple to make but is also absolutly delicious. It is not fear inducing to behold or easy to screw up. It isn't an ordinary dish for most Americans but doesn't feel foreign. If you can just make this dish I believe Henderson will win you over as he won me over. Then when one follows his easy style the recipes open themselves up and the fear of the unknown dissipates as it feels like an old friend is helping you along.
The instruction is warm and often humorous. Nothing feels overly complicated and Henderson's voice clearly conveys what needs to be done for recipes without being overly extracting. And don't think its a tome completly comprised of nasty bits either as Henderson offers fantastic recipes most everyone will be immediatly comfortable with such as Cock-A-Leekie, deviled crab and even a recipe for boiled chicken (which is excellent). But once you've sampled the trotters, the tongues, the sweetbreads and kidneys, the kool-aid has been drunk and there can be little resistance to a new way of eating and thinking about food.
Book Review: The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an excellent book for those interested in the character of food and taste. It describes the (unfortunately) fast disappearing cooking of the old and less affluent days. I see this as the equivalent of English "Soul-Food". Hard times force creativity! Prior to modern times, people used the whole beast, all parts of available vegetables, throwing away the minimum. Slow cooking, coaxing flavours and the "terroir" from the ingredients. Maybe the terrible reputation English food had came from the American troops turning up in England from 1942 onwards. England had been under siege for years at that point, importing only fuel and munitions and other essentials, forcing people to eat local traditional foods. Sheep that were no good for wool any longer were eaten, chicken that didn't lay, were "retired" and eaten. All of the cabbage was cooked, including the tough outer leaves. So old, strong flavoured mutton, stewed cabbage, rabbit, pidgeon - gamey foods were a shocking contrast to the abundant great foods in the USA. The English needed to recall the historical roots of their cooking. I like to think "The Whole Beast", brings them back with some modern and international twists. Lovingly and enigmatically.
Fergus Henderson has written and listed a fascinating collection of recipes and interestingly in a strange and quixotic tone. Deciphering the text and his meaning is fun. It makes one think and search more deeply for the character of the dish, more successfully than simply listing out steps in a recipe. The one big problem or challenge, is finding the raw materials in the U.S. But it is worth the trouble. Full marks!
Book Review: A Return to Utilizing the Whole Animal
Summary: 5 Stars
For me there is nothing scary about cold lamb's brains on toast or crispy pig's tails. I grew up in a gourmet teaching kitchen where lunch was left overs from classes including such wonders as sweetbreads, kidney pie and fish roe. When Bill Cosby came out with a routine about the Chicken Heart that ate Chicago - we ate chicken hearts and loved them - craved them!
So a book with nose to tail eating is not going to make me squirm - it is going to make me drool! and such a well done book. The recipes are in a simple format under the headings Stocks, Soup, Salads, Starters, Lamb's Brains and Sweetbreads, Meat, Birds and Game, Fish and Shellfish, Vegetables, Dressings sauces and Pickles, Puddings and Savories, and Baking.
I find this book a good cross over for those who wish to learn more about using the whole animal - yet need to do this in baby steps. Recipes include "less threatening" cross overs such as Beans and Bacon, Roast Pork Loin with Turnips, Garlic and Anchovies.
With the exception of breads and some sugar in the dessert section, all the ingredients are healthy choices - animal fat, olive oil and real butter. I found this book through the [...] under their thumbs up book reviews. I have yet to buy a book from that recommendation list that has not become a favorite of mine - this book included.
After making the fish pie, sweetbreads and Boiled Beef and dumplings, I have added a trip to Fergus Henderson's restaurant to my "things to do before I pass" list. It doesn't hurt that the restaurant happens to be overseas :-)