Buying the book of the meal

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The fact that best-seller lists are these days sprinkled with cookery books means that the life span for most cookery books in a bookshop is about the same as that for crime fiction. Some would say that the two categories are pretty much interchangeable. Even so, there has been a noticeable move among professional restaurant chef/authors recently to acknowledge reality and write as if they believe that most people's kitchens do not house a brigade of commis-chefs. They can't quite believe it of course, but they like to be seen to be making the effort.

Some chef/authors even hint at a life lived outside the restaurant kitchen and aim to prove it by allowing themselves to be photographed in peculiarly unattractive leisurewear. This is a pity. At least when dressed in whites a chef can lay claim to the allure of a man (or woman) in uniform.

Is buying the book of the meal the ultimate compliment to a restaurant? I don't think so. Surely most of us eat out in order to experience some gradation of luxury, difficulty in obtaining prime raw ingredients, necessary skill, timescale or complexity of preparation different from that appropriate at home. However, I must be wrong because the piles currently in the bookshops flaunt books by restaurant chefs who have not even appeared on television, and this must be the greatest recognition of all.

The first River Cafe Cookbook by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray famously paved the way for the urban restaurant cookbook as phenomenal best seller, innocent of a TV tie-in (that followed, of course). But over and above that book's obvious attractions, I think it touched a chord for a new generation of the English that Elizabeth David first sounded, then pounded, several decades ago. The theme tune is that of a rain-washed people turning their wan faces to the sun.

Fergus Henderson, chef/patron of St John in Clerkenwell, has grasped a much sharper nettle. His book Nose To Tail Eating is sub-titled A Kind of British Cooking. In my various reviews of St John - a fixture on my list of favourite restaurants - I have touched on the fact that, commendably, Henderson has redefined British food, away from the folklorique and towards the championing of home-grown or home-reared ingredients culled at their best moment and treated firmly and fairly.

In the introduction to the book, referring to the title, Henderson says in an arcane grammatical construct, "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". How true, but do we want to be salting and drying pig's liver, simmering pig's head, rolling up pig's spleen or purging snails (even Henderson says he set the slimy creatures free after a few days) at home when we could more easily take ourselves to the restaurant and let that kitchen do the work? There are, it is true, other recipes better geared to Clerkenwell loft than rural small-holding, but the aerial photo-graphic constructions of wrecked food and debris-strewn plates, while bold and gritty, are not exactly their greatest advertisement.

Fergus the man comes across in the writing. You can almost see and hear his curvaceous smile, joyful semaphore and barks of "Ah ha!". I'm glad I have the book and there are some dishes I shall do at home, but it is still to the restaurant I would go first for easygoing nose-to-tail eating - plus civil service, French wines and someone else to clear the plates.

Before leaving the subject of Fergus, other chefs, as well as home cooks, could usefully ponder on this observation he makes in the preface entitled Four Things I Should Mention: "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."

Nose to Tail Eating, A Kind of British Cooking, By Fergus Henderson, (Macmillan, £20).

St. John
St. John Street, London, EC1M 4AY