Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson: The Secret of St John

Welcome to the big leagues

St John is one of only two restaurants in the UK with a truly global reputation.

And by global I don't mean Daniel Boulud global, or Nobu Matsuhisa global. Or even Gordon Ramsay global. Nowadays it seems anyone with a reliable line of debt financing can role out an intercontinental line of fine diners (I believe the Singapore branch of Pollen Street Social is just wrapped up the dinner service as I write; Hakkasan Mumbai likewise).

No I mean El Bulli (RIP) global. Fat Duck Global. French Laundry "please-give-me-a-reservation-I'll-sell-you-my-kids" global.

Global in the sense that if you're remotely interested in food, and happen to be anywhere within a three hundred mile radius you will book a table and move heaven and earth to get there.

Which is weird because St John isn't that kind of restaurant.

The secret of St John

St John is a humble sort of place. You wander in through a whitewashed hallway with plain tables shunted to one side. The bar area - high ceilinged and well lit - is noisy. The stairway down to the loos looks vaguely unstable. Behind you the main dining room is crammed into an awkward space running back out the front of the building. It looks for all the world like a prewar works canteen.

No chintzy carpets or argumentative china here. No French bloke in a double-breasted jacket and a winning smile. The staff wear white smocks. The tables are plain. The menu is printed (twice-daily of course) on plain A4.

So what's the secret?

Lean closer and I'll tell you.

The secret is this.

St John is the finest Italian restaurant in London.

A British cuisine that never existed

By which I mean this. Good Italian cooking is stripped-down, perfectly cooked and ingredient led. There is no faffing around with sauces, liaisons and garnishes. If you go into Locanda Locatelli in London and order the mackerel you will get literally that - a piece of mackerel unadorned on a plate. They simply take the finest ingredients, cook them perfectly, and arrange them together.

That, in a nutshell, is what St John offers. The plates are famously miminalist - most dishes are simply three perfect ingredients on a plate. If wander in during the Spring and order "Peas in the Pod" you will literally get a pile of fresh peas, still in their pods, for your podding pleasure.

Cucina St John: Does what it says on the tin.

What St John does of course add the best of British ingredients and a liberal sense of humour. They they do is take traditional British dishes, ingenuity and combination (with the notable exception of the puddings, which are 100% authentic) and prepare them with a most un-British zealousness and attention to detail.

There is very definitely a sense of place to this book - no exuberant Mediterranean vegetables or exotic fish (although his Green Sauce does feature olive oil). Instead hearty British ingredients - pork, beef, duck, squirrel (yes, squirrel. I've had it and it tastes like chicken). And a fair amount of salting, pickling and preserving involved to to get us through winter months.

Mmmm... Eccles cake...

And what your end up with is a sort of pastiche of Britishness. Think Gilbert & Sullivan: The Restaurant. Much like Marcus Wareing has done at The Gilbert Scott or Heston at Dinner (I can assure you that at no point in the history of this isles did we ever eat a foie-gras enriched chicken liver parfait and call it Meat Fruit). In fact even the famous bone marrow toast may be borrowed - the Brasserie Georges in Lyon does a very similar dish, minus the parsley.

EDIT (Oct 4th): Although intriguingly whilst looking through Unmentionable Cuisine for the piece I published today, I found another recipe for Baked Marrow Bones labelled as an English preparation. So maybe it does come from these isle's after all!

Baked Marrow Bones / EnglandThe fresh femurs or humeri of a choice beef animal are cut into fourths and the cut ends plugged and capped with dough. They then are baked. The baked bones are wrapped individually in napkins, served with salt, pepper, and toast (or on trenchers) and eaten with a long marrow spoon.

In reality, there was never a British cuisine like this. The British never had such a ruthless pursuit of sourcing the best ingredients in season. The British never showed a hint of the skill required to take a piece of meat, cook it perfectly and serve it on a plate. And they never had the bravery to restrain themselves from dousing it in bread sauce, redcurrant gravy and all manner of over-boiled roasties.

But most of all St John isn't about an idea or a cuisine.

It's about Fergus.

Mr Henderson's remarkable voice

Fergus Henderson, author of Nose to Tail Eating and co-author of its sequel Beyond Nose to Tail (yes I haven't forgotten this is a cookbook blog). Is the laconic, eccentric and altogether unique driving force behind St John. Having originally trained as an architect (a rarity in this country, where cheffing is very much a blue-collar career), he opened the dining room at the French House in London's Soho 1992 before moving on to St John three years later. Oh and he's battled Parkinsons along the way too.

His singular voice, and sense of humour pervade both St John cookbooks. It is gently mocking and ironic, sometimes verging on satire. But it is also joyous and emotional, fearlessly reveling in the beasts he bakes. Consider the recipe for Warm Pig's Head (Book 1, p32) which begins:

The flesh from a pig's head is flavoursome and tender. Consider, its cheeks have had just the right amount of exercise and are covered in just the right enriching layer of fat to ensure succulent cooking results, and the nozzle has the lip-sticking quality of not being quite flesh nor quite fat, the perfect foil to the crunch of the crispy ear.

Or his pointed observation to open the recipe for Roast Woodcock (Book 1, p116):

Woodcock defecate before they fly, so they can be roasted with the guts in, which heightens the flavour.

Or this dry commentary on the truffle-oil glugging classes (Book 1, p85):

Is it not splendid when you have a guest to stay who cooks delicious things for you? A fine example is Ken, a chef from Sydney, who prepared this splendid dish full of most of my favourite things. He even finished it off with a healthy splash of truffle oil, which I have omitted from this version, but please express yourself.

Like a well trussed roast, this book is generously larded with "Fergus-isms". The pink ham and the orange swede look like sunset on a plate (Book 1 p65), he memorably declares There is nothing finer than warm little buttock-like buns (Book 2, p109), and the recipe for Nettle and Snail Soup begins Address your snails: pop the chopped garlic and butter into a heated frying pan. Allow for a little sizzle, then add the snails. Roll them around until piping hot, then season with salt and papper (Book 2, p14).

Unlike the ghostwritten gallimaufry which passes for much modern chefbook writing, Fergus' voice shines through clear and true. Cut out the text of a recipe and read it blind, and you will instantly know who the author is.

The whole beast (including the bouncy bits)

Another thing that distinguishes Fergus is that he cares about the beasts he roasts. Not "cares" as in takes them home, coddles them and feeds them warm milk. He is quite happy to kill, disembowel and char-grill the cutest of piglets (as my first witness I call the Roast Whole Suckling Pig, Book 2, p72). But "cares" as in for him an animal is the whole beast. Not just meat. Not just a collection of pork chops in a delivery crate. As he says in the introduction to his first book

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.

Bone Marrow Toast - Salty Jellied Goodness

In saying this he shows a remarkably un-British approach to texture. In modern Britain at least food should either be shattering-crisp or meltingly-tender. Any state in between (in particular the crime being gelatinous and not made of fruit) is a capital offense. In contrast Fergus glorious in the chewy, yielding, sucking bits. Tripe is served jellied in a terrine mould (Book 1, p42), pigs ears likewise (Book 2, p30). And the signature roasted bone marrow (Book 1, p38) is scooped out hot and jellylike onto warn toast before being salted, parsley-ed and crunched.

In some ways this focus on texture and on the "whole beast" is very Asian. Like Fergus the Chinese eat every part of the animal, and are extremely partial to a nice piece of jellied pigs ear (apparently there is good business to be done sending sows ears to China). But in other ways they are worlds apart. The Chinese word for animal (动物) means "moving thing" - entirely inanimate, devoid of a soul and just there for the stewpot. In contrast Fergus instead thinks of a pig as a glorious "beast" which should live a whole and satisfying life - culminating in the stewpot.

Different attitudes, same results.

Grand Finales

There is one area of course where this doesn't really apply, and the British don't need to make any culinary excuses. And that is the puddings.

More puddings please!

Although most of the recipes are a subversive re-casting of British classics, the dessert section is one where Fergus doesn't need to take any liberties. All right, except for his famous Eccle's Cakes (Book 1, p196), where he substitutes puff pastry for the more traditional lard-flaky pastry. But by and large the dessert recipes are presented as straight English classics.

I've always felt that good English desserts are one of the strengths of St John. I will always remember a simple steamed treacle pudding many years ago, indescribably sweet at the base but mellowed with ice-cold cream. If I have any complaint against the cookbooks, its that there simply aren't enough dessert recipes This is particularly true in the first volume where they are lumped, almost as an afterthought, with savouries.

The second volume does its best to make up for this, with longer sections on desserts, puddings and ice-creams (the Blackcurrant Leaf Ice Cream on p203 is particularly intriguing). It also features a lengthy digression on their buttock-like buns, now a feature of their Soho hotel. But if there was one request I would make of Fergus (apart from "pass the bone marrow"), it's "more puddings please"!

A word of warning

A word of caution with how to use this book. I've talked at length about Fergus' philosophy and voice, because without them these books are much less than the sum of their parts. Actually looking through the recipes, some of them seem quite pedestrian.

Parsley sauce: Not rocket science

For example the recipe for Boiled Ham with Parsley Sauce (Book 1, p66) is an entirely straight piece of boiled ham served with a bog-standard white sauce (milk thickened with butter, flour and doused with parsley). Now I know it will taste damn fine in the clattering environs of the restaurant, but I suspect if you cooked it yourself for a weeknight supper it might be something of a disappointment. Similarly the recipe for radishes is just that - A bunch of radishes on a plate with salt, butter and vinaigrette. But then again, maybe that's the point.

I'm not saying you won't enjoy cooking from these books, just don't expect to just buy them and recreate St John at home.

This contrasts very strongly with Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen which I wrote about recently - that was a book which was all about clever recipes. This is a book which is all about a clever author. The difference is vast.

So with that point dealt with, which book to get? Obviously the answer is both, but if forced to choose it get tricky. The first book, Nose to Tail is a more momentous book. If you want the grand signature recipes (the Bone Marrow Toast, the Eccles Cake), this is the one to get. It is less cheffy than the second book, and more about sharing (interestingly all of the photos show dishes being shared.  They are never pictured in individual portions).

The second book is more elegantly presented in an extremely cute pocketable format. The design is more affected, but also more attractive. The recipes also are fuller and better (particularly the puddings), and if you are a baker there is an extensive section on breads.

For my money I'd take the second one away to read a desert island, but I'd prefer to have the first one at home in the cookbook library.

It's a kind of British cooking. And I kind of like it.


Note: All page numbers are taken from my versions of the books (UK Paperback edition of Nose to Tail Eating, UK hardback edition of Beyond Nose to Tail). Your page numbers may differ, particularly in the US edition of the first book which I understand had significant revisions.

Happy in The Kitchen by Michel Richard: If you're happy and you know it...

Real chefs don't do cake

The gap between pastry and cooking is one of the great divides in the modern kitchen. Although it might physically be only a few feet patissiers and chefs are very different animals.

A perfect patissier's of lemon tart. Bonus points if you
 can spot what's wrong with it (answer below)

Chefs are the free thinkers. The dreamers. The guys who can come up with three ways with caviar and chocolate. If a recipe doesn't quite work they can tweak or improvise. Or just claim "it was always meant to be like that".

Patissiers (and their half cousins, bakers) are the mathematicians. They work in weights, measures and ratios. If you're quantities are off you're dead. No excuses (ok, perhaps an exception can be made of the Demoiselles Tatin).

So a chef pastry is a rarity indeed (straight up - I'm a chef. I can terrine a foie gras but my attempts at puff pastry inevitable end up as pancake en croute). And a patissier who can cook is a pearl beyond price.

Anthony Bourdain summed up his bewilderment Kitchen Confidential as he marvels at the career of master-chef Scott Bryan (then at Veritas in NYC, now at Apiary):

The Gotham with Alfred. Back with Kinkaid at 21 Federal in DC. Square One in California. Back to New York with David Bouley. A Hamptons interlud with Jimmy Sears. (Pause for breath here.) Sous-chef for Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin (!)

As if his career wasn't going swimmingly enough for a guy who only a few years earlier had been considering a life installing light sockets and fuse-boxes, the then opened Lespinasse with Grey Kunz.

And if this isn't rich enough meal for you, to round out his skills and ensure his usefulness as an all-around major league player, he crossed the line from a la carte cuisine to pastry - a nearly unthinkable act - and went to work with the awesome uberpatissier, Richard Leach, at Mondrian.

Michel Roux - A rare example of the chef-patissier

Off the top of my head I can only think of a handful of chefs with a real background in pastry. Michel Roux, who held three stars at the Waterside Inn, is one of them. He started his apprenticeship in a Monsieur Loyal's patisserie, and went on to win the Meilleur Ouvrier de France in the same discipline (MOF en patisserie is French for "I'm the Chuck Norris of lemon tarts.").

Then there's Michel Richard, most recently of Citonelle in Washington DC and the author of the extraordinary book Happy in the Kitchen (Artisan, 2006).

The happy chef

Michel Richard, with snack

Michel Richard wasn't originally a chef. He started off in Paris, training with French pastry-god Gaston Lenotre, coming to the US in 1974 to open a cake shop. It was only then that he made the leap to cook behind the stoves, pioneering French-Californian cuisine at Citrus and Citronelle. Then in 1994 he made launched Citronelle in DC (a city more associated with wood-panelled power-breakfasts than Californian cuisine de soleil), finally relocating in 1998.

But it isn't the West-East swap that's extraordinary. It's his food. It achieves the holy grail of combining the technique and discipline of a pastissier with the free-wheeling whimsicality of a chef.

Opening up Happy in the Kitchen is a disorientating experience. Cuttlefish are marmelised and turned into schnitzels. Tomato's are used to make a savoury trifle. Yellow tomato and mozarella is set with gelatin and turned into trompe l'oeil boiled eggs. But as I said, it's not just technical.

There's a playfulness here which is reflected in the names of the recipes. In the first section alone you encounter the All-Crust Potato Gratin, Virtual Fried Rice and Sociable Garlic and Potato Puree. Later on you are introduced to Shrimp "Einstein", Low Carb-o-nara and Chicken Faux Gras. There's a whimisicality here which reminds me of Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Cooking (the book which lists Bath Chaps and the inimitable Hairy Tatties).

If your mother ever told you not to play with your food she was wrong. And Michel Richard is here to tell you why.

The Book of Michel

Happy in the Kitchen is a handsome book, laid out in the large landscape format favoured by many high-end US cookbooks (e.g. the French Laundry Cookbook). The recipes are reassuringly lengthy and, importantly for such a technical book, there are step-by-step pictures for many of the dishes.

But that's nothing special. What is special is the sheet inventiveness which leaps off every page. A good cookbook is one that delivers just that one "amazing who would have thought of that!" moment. But in Happy in the Kitchen I'd found half a dozen before I'd got off the potato section. Here are just a few:

You think that's pasta? Think again...

• All-Crust Potato Gratin (p2): Making a gratin so thin   that there's no mush in the middle - just cheesy crust (OK it's sort of a rosti-in-a-frock).
• Yellow Tomato Tart (p44): Looks like a classic lemon tart, but the custard is made with yellow tomatoes (yes, that's what was what was wrong with the lemon tart above!).
• Tomato Trifle (p48): A savoury dish, made by layering ripe tomatoes, mozarella, fennel and brioche... like a trifle!
• Wild Mushroom Potpie (p64): Mushroom's baked with a pastry lid, where a custard is piped in under the lid halfway through to keep the pastry crust crisp
• Low Carb-O-Nara (p91): Cutting an onion so it falls apart in long strands, then steaming these until they have the texture of pasta before tossing with a carbonara sauce.
• Crisp and Creamy Bacon-Onion Tart (p92): A version of a traditional Flammenkuche (a very thin tart from Alsace), but made using pancakes instead of bread dough for ultimate thinness.
• Scrambled Scallops (p124): Scallops pureed, creamed and gently cooked so they have the texture of snow-white scrambled eggs.
• Cuttlefish fettuccine with Crab and Corn (p134): Cuttlefish pounded and sliced just like tagliatelle (I think Nobu also does a variation on this).
• Cuttlefish Schnitzel (p137): Cuttlefish marmelised and bound with gelatin, then crusted and fried like a schnitzel.
• Virtual Eggs (p161): Faux hardboiled eggs made by pureeing and setting yellow tomatoes and mozarella to make the white and yolk.

The egg that isn't...

• Almost-No-Fat Chicken Sausage (p187): A sausage where the filling is bound with gelatin. To make up for the lack of moistness from the fat, pureed aubergine is added instead.
• Foie Gras Brulee (196): It's a creme brulee. But with foie gras mousse instead of custard. 'Nuff said (Angelus in London also do a good version).
• Caramel and Corn Ice-Cream (p253): A combination which feels natural and really works. (I've had these prepared as a Creme Caramel elsewhere. It's great.)

Hint: That's not caviar either...

There's a number of obvious themes here.

First he clearly shows his fondness for for trompe l'oeil (or as he calls it, trompe la langue) i.e. making one food look like another one. He's particularly fond of dressing up unexpected ingredients (cuttlefish, onion, snow-peas) masquerade as pasta. Or in fact doing the opposite - his famous Lobster Begula involves colouring giant couscous with squid ink to make it look like caviar!

Secondly (as befitting his background), Richard takes traditional patisserie preparations (lemon tarts, trifle, creme brulee) and reuses the techniques with savoury ingredients. Although one surprising thing I'd note - the dessert dishes don't seem quite as interesting as the savoury ones. Maybe this is because dessert for Richard is more like home ground - transmogrifying patisserie into savoury is where he shows off.

Thirdly he understands the importance of texture in his dishes, particularly of getting "crunch". This feels like another inheritance from his pastry background; it is an old truism in the pastry world that a good plated dessert should have 1) a primary ingredient, 2) a sauce and 3) a "crunch".

Finally he loves reconfiguring foods - by which I mean changing their physical form. His most common trick is to puree an ingredient (e.g. cuttlefish), bind it with gelatin and freeze it in a block which can then be sliced into new forms and shapes.

In some ways this feels very much like molecular cuisine. For example his Cuttlefish Schnitzel is not that far off the shrimp noodles prepared by Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 (except Dufresne uses the more space-age transglutaminase rather than gelatin which has the advantage of retaining its binding properties when hot). In fact while there's little direct use of molecular cuisine techniques in this book (no space-age ingredients, weird equipment and only case of sous-vide I noticed) you can very much see the direction in which the cuisine is headed.

In other ways though it actually hearks back to Escoffier. Pounded food up, contorting it into different shapes. Turning them into something they are not - that feels very much like the traditional cuisine where a potato could not be potato unless it was pureed, enriched with eggs and turned into a pomme duchesse.

But to obsess about that is to miss the point. Michel Richard doesn't care how he gets there. He just wants his diners to be delighted and surprised.

And happy.

Heston's Secret Cookbook by Heston Blumenthal

Memories of the Fat Duck

It used to be quite easy to get a table at the Fat Duck. You basically rang up on a Friday afternoon to sort out a table for Saturday lunch. It was extremely convenient for anyone living in west London, as they were one of the few places that did a cheapo set lunch on the Saturday (twenty-something quid - plus a bit for coffee).

The Duck itself used to be a homely sort of place - not like that posh French joint up they road which charged fifty quid for a lobster. The first time I went there they had slightly rickity wrought iron tables but when we came back they had table-clothed up (and put in new loos upstairs, too). The food wasn't bad either, although we did send back the skate-wing once because it was underdone at the bone. Chef sent it back out again, saying that was how he preferred it. I don't recall how we sorted out that one.

They had the snail porridge on at the time - it actually came as a starter on the cheapo set. Actually it wasn't all that scary - it was basically a risotto made using oats instead of rice, flavoured with the classic snails-garlic-parsley combination. For the main course I liked the duck "petit-sale" - a braised duck leg made to look like a mini lamb leg, swaddled in a lovely shiny sauce. Desserts were always quite fun - although they kept on doing a carrot-salt-toffee thing which I never quite saw the point of (I've had an aversion to salt caramel since a visiting uncle left us with a ginormous box of See's Salt Water Taffy many years ago).

The advice I used to give any friends going was avoid the tasting menu, because if you went on the a la carte you got about half a dozen inter-course bits anyway. For example you got the mustard ice-cream on a bed of red cabbage, and the green-tea snifter (originally a foam in a glass, later a nitro-blasted quenelle). Leave the tasting menu for tourists, the a la carte had plenty good. I vividly remember tiny cubes of jelly accompanying the pigeon, which went off like firecrackers on the tongue, and the intensely flavoured crab biscuit which was nothing like what I'd expected - a sort of shimmering crab glass. I always had my eye on the lasagne of langoustine and pigs trotter, but I don't think I ever tried it. The six pounds fifty supplement was too rich for us.

Heston was also out and about too. I remember having a good twenty minute chat with him one time, by the kitchen hatch. He was banging on about the bacon and egg ice-cream at the time, and how they kept on changing how they served the dish. We always hoped he wouldn't realise it was us who'd sent the skate wing back.

Then of course he got the third star and it all went crazy. We didn't go back for a long time - if only because it became such a faff to book, plus we moved away from West London. When we did finally try again, for my brother's birthday, the place had changed. The room seemed darker and and was packed to the rafters. The menu had transmogrified into a giant leather-bound slab. Against our better judgement we went for the tasting menu (after all, it was a "destination restaurant" now). But when mum asked to sub out the snail porridge (she'd never really liked it on past visits) the waiter gave a condescending smirk as if she was a scaredy tourist. It felt more like a theme park ride than a restaurant.

Then they had a power cut right after the nitro-green tea mousse, and all the customers had to be sent home. I think we ended up getting supper from a Chinese takeaway in Ickenham.

Heston's Golden Years

It's always tempting to look back with rose-tinted spectacles. Especially when you had somewhere like the Fat Duck pretty much on your doorstep (okay, a short hop via the M40/M25/M4). But I do think some of Heston's finest food writing also dates from those early years. From 2001 until 2003 - the era when he won his third star - he wrote a regular column in the Guardian, full of recipes and insights. After the *** was awarded in 2004, it was scaled down to a recipe-less magazine column before finally petering out in 2005 when he jumped ship to The Times (if I recall, he took umbrage with the Grauniad for reporting on his dodgy health and safety inspection, or suchlike).

I was never quite as impressed when he was writing for The Times. At the time they had a remarkable all-star roster of food writers (including Gordon Ramsay in his pomp), which seemed to spend the whole time giving inane recipes for homebakes. I blame slack ghost-writing.

But the early Guardian columns were quite something else. You can see iconic recipes like that Caviar and White Chocolate Buttons and the Bacon and Egg Ice-Cream being born before your eyes. Sous-vide, low-temperature cooking and popping candy are passe now, but at the time it seemed like cooking from Mars. The classics I remember from the Duck are all there - the Petit-Sale of Duck (that brine is also a great alternative to the traditional salt-rub for duck confit), the pigeon, the green-tea-lime sour (pre-nitro version). Just as White Heat captures Marco Pierre White in his pomp, this is Heston at the bleeding edge.

And as far as I know, this stuff never made it into print, at least not in its original form. When Heston did pour his formidable talents on his book, it was the quixotic Family Food, a volume about food for kids that presumably suited his stage of life but left the rest of the hard-core fans panting for something more. Then he got diverted into TV with a series of tie-in volumes that had lots of hard science, but little soul. Yes the Big Fat Duck Book did finally land in 2008, but that felt more like a tombstone than a book. For sure it's worth getting, and has all the greatest hits. But they are prettified, refined version. Not the raw originals.

But the good thing is, all those Guardian columns are still out there on the website. You just have to find them.

Introducing Heston's Secret Cookbook

I like to think of them as Heston's Secret Cookbook - the volume he never wrote detailing what he saw at the revolution. So what I've done here is a sort of culinary archaeology. I've collected links to all the articles below, with a brief note about what he discusses in each article, and what recipes are included. This is the Table of Contents

I've also taken the recipes, and grouped them into a more conventional cookbook format, each with a link going to the relevant article. As he often included two or three recipes in each article, many links are duplicated. But it lets you see when this might have looked like, if he'd adopted a more conventional approach. This is the Recipe Index at the end of the post.

So feel free to browse, and cast your mind back to a more innocent time. When savoury ice-creams were shocking, rather than something you find in the supermarket. And foams were fun.

Enjoy.

Heston's Secret Cookbook - Table of Contents

Article	Theme (Date)	Recipe
The appliance of science	Introduction to food science (10-Nov-01)	Green Tea and Lime Sour
		Confit salmon with lentils
		Herve This's chocolate Chantilly
Bean there, done that	Not cooking vegetables in salted water (17-Nov-01)	Haricots verts a la Crème
		Salad of haricots
		Runner beans with cucumber
Love me tender	Low temp meat cooking (24-Nov-01)	Saddle of lamb
		Gigot a sept heures
		Braised shoulder of lamb
The proof of the pudding…	Tenderising with pineapple (08-Dec-01)	Roast pineapple
		Pineapple and chilli jelly
		Crab Syrup
Let the festivities commence	Heston's Christmas meal (15-Dec-01)	Pot-roast pork
		Pears poached in red wine
Where's the sense in that?	Playing with preconceptions about food (22-Dec-01)	Spice mix for chicken or fish
		Parsnip cereal with parsnip milk
		Beetroot jellies
A whole new bowl game	Stocks and soups (05-Jan-02)	Butternut squash soup
		Lentil soup
		Clear chicken soup
Absorbing experience	Risotto (12-Jan-02)	Basic risotto
		Cauliflower risotto
		Pea risotto
Soak it and see	Brining meat (19-Jan-02)	Petit sale of duck
		Two preparations for fish
Butter them up	Potatoes (02-Feb-02)	Basic potato recipe
		Good old-fashioned mash
		Crushed potatoes
		Pommes puree
Sunday best	Perfect Sunday lunch (09-Feb-02)	Roast chicken
		Roast potatoes
		Buttered cabbage
Cut and dried	Pasta (16-Feb-02)	Spaghetti carbonara
		Gratin of macaroni
		Spaghettini with clams
The heat is off	Low temperature roasting (02-Mar-02)	Roast rib of beef
		A sauce for the roast
		Beef juices
The light fantastic	Desserts with Herve This (09-Mar-02)	Chocolate fondant
		Rice tuile
		Avocado rice
Mind over matter	Perception of taste vs. flavour (16-Mar-02)	Strawberry soup
Fine and dandy	Mackerel (27-Apr-02)	Rilettes of macherel
		Escabeche of mackerel
		Red peppers marinated with anchovies
Weird but wonderful	Flavour matching (04-May-02)	Caviar and white chocolate discs
		Beetroot and green peppercorn jelly
		Mango puree
Cream cracker	Ice cream (11-May-02)	Vanilla ice cream
		Mrs Marshall's almond cornets
		Mrs Marshalls' apple ice cream
Top tips	Asparagus (25-May-02)	Pot-roast asparagus
		Parmesan ice cream
		Asparagus soup
A burst of flavour	Flavour encapsulation (01-Jun-02)	Bacon and egg ice cream
		Caremlised brioche
		Tomato and red pepper 'jam'
		Tea jelly
Drink and thrive	Cooking with alcohol (08-Jun-02)	Red wine sauce for fish
		Coq au vin
Good fry day	Egg & chips (22-Jun-02)	Chips
		Fried egg
Ahead of the game	Food technology research (29-Jun-02)	Blue cheese chantilly
Paint the town red	Tomatoes (06-Jul-02)	Tomato fondue
		Ratatouille
My heart belongs to umami	Umami (13-Jul-02)	Marinted squid with Parmesan
		Poached sea bream with konbu borth
		Salad of green beans and tomatoes
Bursting with pleasure	Flavour encapsulation (again) (20-Jul-02)	Butternut squash and red pepper soup
		Vanilla ice cream with encapsulated flavour bursts
Keep a lid on it	Cooking in a cocotte dish (24-Aug-02)	Cocotte of duckling and chicory
		Cocotte of potatoes and peas
		Cocotte of cod
Lord of the rings	Onions (31-Aug-02)	Onion puree
		Maliks onion bhajee
		Dried onion slices
The nutty professor	Pistachios (07-Sep-02)	Pistachio ice cream
		Pistachio scrambled egg
		Sugared pistachios
You won't know till you try…	Food for kids (28-Sep-02)	Cream of tomato soup
		Pot-roast cod
		Couscous salad
Mission possible	Vegetables for kids (05-Oct-02)	Braised lettucs
		Glazed carrots
		Gratin of potatoes
Keep them sweet	Desserts for kids (19-Oct-02)	Jacks' raspberry crunch
		Nectarines poached with star anise and rosemary
Great shakes	Jelly (26-Oct-02)	Mead and sichuan peppercorn jelly
		Beetroot and orange jelly
		Kir Royale jelly
Under cover	Braising (02-Nov-02)	Rognonnade of veal
		Chicken with vinegar
		Braised turnips
Happy ever afters	British desserts (09-Nov-02)	Vanilla junket
		Rice pudding
		Basil blancmanger
A flash in the pan	Liver (30-Nov-02)	Sauteed calve's liver with cream of bacon sauce
		Parfait of chicken livers
		Black olive puree with red mullet liver
Take your time	Stewing meat (07-Dec-02)	Beef juice
		Chicken broth
		Ox cheek (or oxtail) stew
It's a cracker	Christmas recipes (14-Dec-02)	Mince pie ice cream
		Hazelnut red wine drink
		A Christmas version of Mrs Blumenthal's cheesecake
Accidentally on purpose	Idea generation (04-Jan-03)	Carrot toffee
		Butternut ice cream
		Dried carrot
Shuck it and see	Recipes from Sydney (11-Jan-03)	Liam Tomlin's freshly shucked oysters with Vietnamese dressing
		Tetsua Wakuda's slow roasted rack of lamb with miso and blue cheese
		Neil Perry's confit of green-lip abalone with fine noodles, mushroom, soy and truffle oil
Practice makes perfect	Restaurant-level cooking (18-Jan-03)	Poached Anjou pigeon breast, a pastilla of its leg with cherries, pistachio, cocoa and quatre epices
Mind over matter	Food memory (01-Feb-03)	Crab ice cream
		Vanilla-pine sherbert dib-dab
		Sardines on toast ice cream
Memory is everything?	Food memory (again) (08-Feb-03)	Crushed meringue and pistachio with soya sauce mayonnaise
		Toothpaste and mouthwash
		Celeriac soup, curried marshmallow, bacon
Hang on in there	Hanging meat (15-Feb-03)	Steak with sauce moelle
		Potatoes sauteed from raw
Golden Wonder	Lemon tart (01-Mar-03)	Lemon tart with butter-based filling 1
		Lemon tart with butter-based filling 2
		Custard-based lemon tart
Flour power	Pastry (08-Mar-03)	Shortbread pastry
		Chocolate shortbread
Make ends meat	Spag bol (15-Mar-03)	Bolognese sauce, or ragu
		Wilted baby spinach with mortadella
		Mortadella chilli oil
Gaga for Aga	Aga cooking (29-Mar-03)	Brine
		Shoulder of pork
		Pot-roast pork
It's a choux in	Choux pastry (05-Apr-03)	Profiteroles
		Vanilla ice cream
		Chocolate sauce
It's crunch time!	Spring vegetables (12-Apr-03)	Charlotte of vegetables
		Tomato fondue
		Olive puree
The secret ingredient	Popping candy (24-May-03)	Popping candy base
		Chocolate mousse
		Chocolate glaze
Heston Blumenthal easy	Simple cooking (31-May-03)	Toasted cheese
		Marinated peppers with anchovies
		Confit tomatoes
No messing	Eton mess (28-Jun-03)	Eton mess
		Meringue
		Strawberry juice
Mini marvels	Lentils (05-Jul-03)	Braised lentils
		Lentil soup
		Lentil tuiles
Gee Whisk	Emulsions (12-Jul-03)	Mayonnaise
		Custard
		Bearnaise sauce
It takes all sorts	Liquorice (09-Aug-03)	Liquorice made for treacle
		Liquorice jelly
		Liquorice ice cream
The acid test	Acidity and fruit (16-Aug-03)	Balsamic mousse
		Raspberry juice
		Raspberry jelly
If the cap fits	Mushrooms (13-Sep-03)	Duxelle
		Bouillon de champignons de printemps comme un cappuccino
		Dried mushrooms
Taste not, want not	Flavour combinations (again) (20-Sep-03)	Cauliflower puree
		Braized shoulder of lamb
		Poached peaches with pistachio and almonds
Fire away	Blowtorching food (27-Sep-03)	Chicken in salt crust with hay
		Jasmine crème brulee
Magic dust	Quartre-epices (11-Oct-03)	Quartre-epices
		Ballotine of foie grast with quatre-epices
		Jellied beef
We have blast off	Microwaves (18-Oct-03)	Nicholas Kurti's stuffed profiteroles
		Braised' shallots
Game on	Game (26-Oct-03)	Loin of venison
		Sauce poivrade
		Fried muscat grapes
The twist in the tail	Stewing cheap cuts (15-Nov-03)	Oxtail stew
		Pickled daikon
		Parsnip puree
The great all-rounder	Couscous (22-Nov-03)	Couscous with hazelnut and rosemary
		Couscous-c'est moi au pain perdu
		Sweet couscous
Chill out	Winter vegetables (06-Dec-03)	Pumpkin risotto
		Mushroom tart
		Osso bucco of carrots
Golden globe	Oranges (13-Dec-03)	Carrots glazed with orange and cumin
		Terrine of blood oranges
		Orange bavarois
Net gains	Fish (20-Dec-03)	Macherel tart
		Escabeche of red mullet

Heston's Secret Cookbook - Recipe Index

How it works: Links take you through to the full article containing the featured recipe. Note that components which go together to form a final dish may be split between categories - but obviously the source link will have them all together. If a name comes up twice its because he used the same dish in different articles (although actually the recipes themselves are often subtly different).

Meat, Fish and Fowl

Meat

• Gigot a sept heures
• Braised shoulder of lamb
• Braised shoulder of lamb
• Saddle of lamb
• Tetsua Wakuda's slow roasted rack of lamb with miso and blue cheese
• Pot-roast pork
• Pot-roast pork
• Shoulder of pork
• Jellied beef
• Ox cheek (or oxtail) stew
• Roast rib of beef
• Steak with sauce moelle
• Oxtail stew
• Rognonnade of veal
• Sauteed calve's liver with cream of bacon sauce
• Loin of venison

Poultry

• Chicken in salt crust with hay
• Chicken with vinegar
• Coq au vin
• Parfait of chicken livers
• Roast chicken
• Cocotte of duckling and chicory
• Petit sale of duck
• Ballotine of foie gras with quatre-epices
• Poached Anjou pigeon breast, a pastilla of its leg with cherries, pistachio, cocoa and quatre epices

Seafood

• Neil Perry's confit of green-lip abalone with fine noodles, mushroom, soy and truffle oil
• Red peppers marinated with anchovies
• Marinated peppers with anchovies
• Cocotte of cod
• Pot-roast cod
• Macherel tart
• Escabeche of mackerel
• Rilettes of macherel
• Liam Tomlin's freshly shucked oysters with Vietnamese dressing
• Escabeche of red mullet
• Poached sea bream with konbu borth
• Marinated squid with Parmesan
• Sardines on toast ice cream
• Confit salmon with lentils
• Two preparations for fish

Vegetables

Vegetables

• Pot-roast asparagus
• Haricots verts a la Crème
• Runner beans with cucumber
• Salad of green beans and tomatoes
• Salad of haricots
• Buttered cabbage
• Carrots glazed with orange and cumin
• Glazed carrots
• Osso bucco of carrots
• Cauliflower puree
• Pickled daikon
• Fried muscat grapes
• Braised lentils
• Lentil soup
• Lentil tuiles
• Braised lettuces
• Dried mushrooms
• Duxelle
• Mushroom tart
• Dried onion slices
• Maliks onion bhajee
• Onion puree
• Parsnip puree
• 'Braised' shallots
• Wilted baby spinach with mortadella
• Butternut squash and red pepper soup
• Confit tomatoes
• Tomato fondue
• Braised turnips
• Charlotte of vegetables
• Ratatouille

Potatoes

• Basic potato recipe
• Chips
• Cocotte of potatoes and peas
• Crushed potatoes
• Good old-fashioned mash
• Gratin of potatoes
• Pommes puree
• Potatoes sauteed from raw
• Roast potatoes

Soup, Pasta, Risotto and Eggs

Soup

• Asparagus soup
• Bouillon de champignons de printemps comme un cappuccino
• Butternut squash soup
• Celeriac soup, curried marshmallow, bacon
• Chicken broth
• Clear chicken soup
• Cream of tomato soup
• Lentil soup

Risotto, Pasta and couscous

• Basic risotto
• Cauliflower risotto
• Pea risotto
• Pumpkin risotto
• Gratin of macaroni
• Spaghetti carbonara
• Spaghettini with clams
• Couscous-c'est moi au pain perdu
• Couscous salad
• Couscous with hazelnut and rosemary

Eggs, cheese and savoury ices

• Bacon and egg ice cream
• Crab ice cream
• Fried egg
• Parmesan ice cream
• Pistachio scrambled egg
• Toasted cheese

Desserts, Jellies and Ice-Creams

Desserts

• Mrs Marshall's almond cornets
• Avocado rice
• Basil blancmanger
• Caremlised brioche
• Carrot toffee
• Dried carrot
• A Christmas version of Mrs Blumenthal's cheesecake
• Caviar and white chocolate discs
• Chocolate fondant
• Chocolate mousse
• Herve This's chocolate Chantilly
• Nicholas Kurti's stuffed profiteroles
• Profiteroles
• Sweet couscous
• Meringue
• Custard-based lemon tart
• Lemon tart with butter-based filling 1
• Lemon tart with butter-based filling 2
• Liquorice ice cream
• Liquorice jelly
• Mince pie ice cream
• Toothpaste and mouthwash
• Nectarines poached with star anise and rosemary
• Orange bavarois
• Terrine of blood oranges
• Parsnip cereal with parsnip milk
• Poached peaches with pistachio and almonds
• Pears poached in red wine
• Roast pineapple
• Crushed meringue and pistachio with soya sauce mayonnaise
• Sugared pistachios
• Popping candy base
• Jacks' raspberry crunch
• Raspberry jelly
• Rice pudding
• Rice tuile
• Eton mess
• Strawberry soup
• Jasmine crème brulee
• Vanilla junket
• Vanilla-pine sherbert dib-dab
• Balsamic mousse

Ices

• Butternut ice cream
• Mrs Marshalls' apple ice cream
• Pistachio ice cream
• Vanilla ice cream
• Vanilla ice cream
• Vanilla ice cream with encapsulated flavour bursts

Jellies

• Beetroot and green peppercorn jelly
• Beetroot and orange jelly
• Beetroot jellies
• Kir Royale jelly
• Mead and sichuan peppercorn jelly
• Pineapple and chilli jelly
• Tea jelly

Sauces, Pastry and Drinks

Sauces (Savoury)

• A sauce for the roast
• Bearnaise sauce
• Beef juice
• Beef juices
• Black olive puree with red mullet liver
• Blue cheese chantilly
• Bolognese sauce, or ragu
• Brine
• Crab Syrup
• Mayonnaise
• Mortadella chilli oil
• Olive puree
• Quartre-epices
• Red wine sauce for fish
• Sauce poivrade
• Spice mix for chicken or fish
• Tomato fondue

Pastry

• Chocolate shortbread
• Shortbread pastry

Sauces (Sweet)

• Chocolate glaze
• Chocolate sauce
• Custard
• Liquorice made for treacle
• Mango puree
• Raspberry juice
• Strawberry juice
• Tomato and red pepper 'jam'

Drinks and foams

• Green Tea and Lime Sour
• Hazelnut red wine drink

Pei Mei's Chinese Cookbook by Fu Pei Mei: The best Chinese cookbook you've never heard of

How to know when you've really made it

As every fule kno, there is only one way to tell if you've really made it as a chef.

No it's not cooking at the White House (looks like they take anyone nowadays).

Nor is it being on the World's 50 Best Restaurant List (lets face it is a PR stunt. A very elegant choreographed one but a PR stunt nonetheless. I mean for heaven's sake my mate Gary Marshall used to be one of the judges! How low can they go? :-p ).

No, as every fule kno, you've really made it when someone starts a blog about you.

Like Julia Child - housewife, cook and TV superstar.

Or ubermensch David Chang of Momofuku.

Or our very own Heston.

Or Fu Pei Mei.

Fu who?

Quite.

Pei-Mei is best described as the Julia Child of Chinese cooking (that's Delia Smith to you Brits, but without the special crunchy roast potatoes). Like dear Julia she was the mysterious combination of housewife, cook and TV superstar. She educated generations of Taiwanese housewives via her weekly cookery show, clattering through more than 4,000 different dishes over the course of 40 years.

Of course that wasn't originally the plan. Also like Julia she was shaped by the Second World War. Born in Japanese-controlled Manchuria in 1931, she grew up speaking not only Mandarin but fluent Japanese. After the Chinese civil war she joined the Nationalist exodus to Taiwan where she established a Chinese cooking school (renowned Phildelphia chef Susanna Foo was an alumnus), before branching out into TV. Although she never ran a restaurant, she was an ubiquitous presence preserving Chinese cookery in Taiwan, at time when the mainland government was closing down restaurants and generally taking a wrecking ball to their culinary heritage.

She died in 2004, but she left her magnum opus - a trilogy of Chinese Cook Books (nattily titled Pei Mei's Chinese Cook Book, Volumes I, II and III). Once considered vital for a bride's dowry (think Silver Spoon, but with recipes that actually work), they are the best Chinese cookbooks you've never heard of.

The greatest Chinese cookbook ever?

I have to admit it, set against today's multimedia productions it doesn't look like much. There's no accompanying DVD, spin-off website or exclusive ebook. This is strictly old-school - badly typewritten recipes, insert colour plates and laughable page design. Hey, this was state of the art in 1969!

But in other ways these books were way ahead of their time.

For one thing they are regional. Regional Chinese food is one of the uber-trends here in London, spearheaded by Fuschia Dunlop's books of Sichuan and Hunan cuisine and backed up by a rash of regional restaurant openings. Whereas previously you were strictly limited to bad Canto-Anglo food, now you can gorge yourself on Manchurian hotpot, Xinjiang lamb skewers and an ubiquitous dose of Sichuan Dan Dan Mian.

Pei Mei was well ahead of that, particularly in the first book where recipes are laid out by region rather than ingredient. Different sections cover Eastern (Sichuan, Hunan), Southern (Canton), Western (Shanghai) and Northern (Beijing, Shandong). Within that there's comprehensive coverage off all the greatest hits - Drunken Chicken from Shanghai, Tea-Smoked Duck from Sichuan. Not to mention an eponymous dose of Peking Duck. If you want a basic primer on the great dishes of Chinese cuisine, this is an excellent place to start.

For another thing this is authentic. Traditionally Chinese (and other ethnic) cookbooks are toned-down and Westernised for Western tastes. Ken Hom (bless his shiny hubcap) is a great exponent of this. It's only more recently we've seen a search for more authenticity and complexity in our ethnic cuisine (as exemplified again by Fuschia Dunlop).

Well Fu Pei-Mei says sod that.

Her books are uncompromisingly authentic, because they date from a time before such niceties. They are basically straight translations of what she wrote for those Taiwanese housewives. Actually the original books are unique because they are bilingual - with Chinese recipe and English text on opposite pages. Even now it is very unusual to have straight translations of foreign works published (the only ones I can think of are the Silver Spoon and Nobu Now (not many people realise this is a straight translation of his Japanese cookbook).

Now that has its disadvantages as well. Let's say that her translator wasn't exactly Hemingway. Sometimes the translations are unintentional hilarious. A dish called Chuan Jia Fu which literally means "Blessing for the Whole Family" gets titled "Assorted Dish with Brown Sauce" (presumably the translator was rushing to get home that day?).

How not to translate a cookbook...

The book goes beyond the standards. The other good thing about being authentic, is that this book isn't afraid to go off-piste into the wilds of Chinese cooking. For example the whole of Volume III is devoted to formal Chinese banqueting dishes, a whole other branch of Chinese cuisine which is not touched on in any other Chinese cookbook I know of.

You also get a lot of dishes which appeal to Chinese tastes which are censored out of more Westernised books - for example cold/gelatinous meat dishes (Spiced Duck Cold Cuts is a family favourite), steamed custards (similar to Japanese chawanmushi). And where else can you get a dish who's first step reads "Kill fish by striking a blow on the head (do not remove head)."

Step 0. First catch your fish...

There are also whole sections on pastry and dough work which are very very unusual in Chinese cookbooks (the only book I've seen which does this in decent detail is Beyond the Great Wall). This involves some particularly interesting techniques e.g. the recipes for lard-based flaky pastry (used for egg tarts and turnip puffs) which roll and fold two separate types of dough together. Along with recipes for a whole battery of Northern Chinese dumplings and pancakes.

Plus in book three there is a recipe for Braised Turtle. 'Nuff said.

And finally the recipes do actually work! That's the big danger, particularly for cookbooks of a certain age  (Larousse Gastronomique 1984 Edition I'm looking at you). Thankfully not an issue here - as the Pei Mei a Day blog shows these recipes stand up pretty well. And I can also defer to my mother on this one - having cooked from volumes I and II for over twenty years she can certainly say they work.

Okay, there's some catches...

Note the hilarious spot of cutting and pasting on her head!

Of course that's not to say this is perfect - with cruddy 1960s typesetting, cut-and-paste and a slightly creaky translation (do count the number of ingredients in the Chinese vs. English dish to check they haven't missed something out). As I said before this is not a user friendly book and unless you have a serious Mad Men/retro thing going on you may find it hard going.


And most annoying of all there is very little context given to the dishes or the cuisine. Pei-Mei gives tantalising hints in the introduction, discussing the need to harmonise colour, taste and aroma, the importance of cutting and noting that even the order in which seasonings are added affects the final taste of the dish. However the doesn't expand on any of this. If you want a deeper understanding of the philosophy and techniques behind Chinese cooking, the introduction to Fuschia Dunlop's Sichuan Cookery remains the best place to look.

So this shouldn't be the only Chinese cookbook you buy. But it one you shouldn't miss out on.

Back in print! (sort of)

Of course the problem as with all of these older books is where to get them - they are long out of print from all the usual outlets. Thankfully there are reasonably price copies of all the books floating around on Amazon (much better availability on the US site than the UK one from the looks of it).

More usefully I've noticed that they've been republished as ebooks on the iTunes Book Store: http://www.askmarpublishing.com/books/pei-mei.html. Although these versions lack the Chinese translation they claim to have tidied up some of the inaccuracies in the English Translation.

I wonder if they still call that dish "Assorted Dish With Brown Sauce"?? :-x