Foodies go hog wild

When Fergus Henderson published his cookbook in Britain in 1999, he promoted it by doing a single cooking demonstration at a supermarket in Cambridge and throwing himself a party at his London restaurant St. John.

Though that restaurant has a reputation as one of the best places to eat in Great Britain, the publisher, Macmillan, apparently was skeptical of the book’s chances, and when the modest first press run of 5,000 copies sold out, they declined to reprint.

Their reluctance was understandable. “Nose to Tail Eating� is about cooking things most people refuse to eat -- offal such as tripe, brains and liver, and other cuts that are euphemistically called variety meats.

Really, in this day and age, who can get excited about recipes for rolled pig’s spleen or cold lamb’s brains on toast?

Well, quite a few folks, actually. Partly because it was odd, partly because it was good and partly because eating off-cuts somehow had become a foodie rite of passage, the British edition became quite collectible. The rare times it shows up on EBay, it routinely fetches $200 and more.

Among its biggest fans are Anthony Bourdain, and through a splendid example of viral marketing, now seemingly every chef in America. Henderson’s book, which has just been published in this country under the slightly less explicit title “The Whole Beast,� is what everyone who is anyone in the food world is talking about this spring.

It seems that everywhere you turn, you’re bumping into newfound offal-ites. In a long feature story on the phenomenon, New York magazine has dubbed it “Extreme Eating.�

Much of the success of Henderson’s book is due to Bourdain, the roguish author of the bestselling “Kitchen Confidential.� He adopted “The Whole Beast� as a personal crusade. He found it a publisher, wrote the introduction and then began sermonizing from every outlet he could find.

“Most Important Publishing Event EVER,� Bourdain, a man admittedly given to extreme enthusiasms, trumpeted on E-Gullet, the online foodie salon. “Writing an intro for this book was perhaps the single proudest accomplishment of my life.�

In that introduction he enthused: “If I’m ever sentenced to death, I want Fergus Henderson to cook my last meal. [This] is a cult classic from my favorite chef and favorite restaurant in the world.�

Bourdain is not alone. Mario Batali, the cherubic and omnivorous chef of six Manhattan restaurants, blurbed, “Reading and dreaming of all these recipes makes me want to torch my own Babbo for pretending to be a restaurant and move to London to heed the master’s call.�

On Amazon.com, three of the first “consumer� reviews are by Bourdain, Bourdain’s wife and Batali.

On his six-city American book tour, completed last month, Henderson was feted by local chefs at every stop, with parties hosted by personalities as diverse as Berkeley’s Alice Waters and Chicago’s Charlie Trotter.

In Los Angeles, the third city on the tour, he was still getting his feet under him. At his local party, hosted by old friends Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of TV’s “Too Hot Tamales� at their Ciudad restaurant downtown, Henderson had the slightly bedazzled air of a man in the eye of a hurricane. His heavy canvas suit jacket, though artfully cut, was slightly askew, and his eyes looked wide behind owlish, modern black glasses.

“Honestly, it’s a bit hard to remember oneself in all of this,� he says. “I’ll be doing a radio interview and they’ll start reading quotes from the book, and I’ll wonder if they’ve got the right person.�

Henderson seems as unlikely a candidate for this kind of wild adulation as can be imagined. Quiet and reserved, he seems more like a respected academic on holiday than a superstar chef.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine an odder couple than Henderson and Bourdain, who, with his tales of carousing and cooking (pretty much in that order), has created an image for himself as the Keith Richards of the kitchen. The two met when Bourdain came to dinner at St. John. As research for his book and television show “A Cook’s Tour,� Bourdain was traveling the world eating odd things.

“He had come in one night when, honestly, the kitchen was not quite chirpy,� Henderson says. “But he was very generous. He came back and said something like, ‘You guys rocked.’ Then he included us in his television show. We cooked a ‘Nose to Tail’ feast for him, and he really became my champion.

“We do make quite an unlikely pair, but the odd thing is that it’s not really that strange. Underneath, Tony is really a very gentle, lovely, calm chap, though I know he wouldn’t want me to say that.�

Neither is Henderson what you’d expect from someone who has made his reputation selling -- quite literally in some cases -- blood and guts. But despite those gory-sounding ingredients, his approach to cooking is anything but Braveheart. In fact, it’s downright philosophical.

“I think if anyone comes looking for a real male, testosterone-fueled blood fest, they might be a bit disappointed,� he says. “It’s not that; it’s not blood and guts. It’s just enjoyable food. It’s not a lad-ish or chef-ish kind of ritual, it’s not the-thing-of-the-moment-ish or I-don’t-know-what-else-ish.

“It does seem to me that all of these foods ought to be eaten, if nothing else, merely out of courtesy to the animal. If someone is going to knock you off, then wouldn’t you want them to make the most of you?�

But Henderson is reluctant to get too messianic about the whole thing. “It’s more politeness than spirituality,� he says. “It’s not a mission, because that sounds serious. It’s all about pleasure. It’s just enjoying yourself. As soon as it becomes a mission, there’s not much fun in it.�

Instead, it is Henderson’s supporters who are on a mission.

“People tend to get evangelical around Fergus,� says Bourdain. “He’s a cause, not just a person or a restaurant. He hooked me. There is the wonderful juxtaposition of this rather rough but precise country cooking with the rather shy and retiring and aristocratic Mr. Henderson that I found really, really wonderful. The food spoke to me and I loved the book and I thought, ‘You know, this is a guy who is doing God’s work.’ His restaurant is the kind of place I always wished I could own, and I think most chefs feel the same way.�

Indeed, there is a healthy dose of wish fulfillment that comes out when other cooks talk about Henderson and St. John. He is serving the kinds of dishes they wish they could include on their menus -- roasted marrow bone with parsley salad, pig’s feet stuffed with mashed potatoes, beans braised with brined pork belly -- but most of them rarely even dare to try.

“There is no question about it, the most triumphant moment for most chefs is when they get their customers to take a chance, to try something a little different,� Bourdain says. “It’s easy to sell jumbo shrimp and lobster, but it’s a personal victory when you can sell a customer on pigs’ feet. I think we like to see him as the vanguard of something.�

Whether mainstream cookbook buyers will embrace the same vision the chefs have is the gamble Daniel Halpern, the book’s publisher, has taken. The book’s first printing is 15,000, which Halpern hopes eventually to push to 25,000. The editorial director of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, Halpern struck gold with the paperback edition of Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential,� selling more than 416,000 copies.

Still, when Bourdain came to him with Henderson’s book, Halpern was not in the mood to listen. “I said, ‘Yeah, but organ meats? An unknown chef? I just don’t see it,’ so I didn’t do anything,� Halpern recalls. “Tony kept after me for three years. ‘I’ll do anything if you’ll publish this book,’ he told me. Finally one night at dinner I said OK. I’d probably had too much wine.�

And then the Bourdain publicity machine cranked into action. “I have never seen so much pre-publication response to any book I’ve ever published,� says Halpern. “It’s a different kind of buzz, kind of a secret buzz. It’s a book that so many people say they never would look at, but word spread among serious food people so quickly. Every time I went out for dinner, I took a bound galley to the chef. Every one of them knew what it was and couldn’t believe they’d gotten a copy of it.

“I said from the beginning that it will start with the chefs, then go to the serious food people, then it will eventually get to people who would ordinarily turn away from it but will now have to have it on their tables to show how hip they are.�

All of which puts Henderson in the odd position of being hyped like some kind of television reality show. “Fear Factor� meets “The Restaurant.� Could jellied tripe really turn out to be the flavor of the week?

“I do find it quite strange,� he says. “I’m a jolly chap and I’m happy to take what’s offered, but it’s really quite odd when it gets to be something like this kind of cult. I’ve had chefs come up and say they want to torch their restaurants and start over. That’s rather odd, isn’t it? But at the moment it’s working on my side, and I’m not about to kick it in the shins.�

*

Pork belly investing pays off

There is a pork belly roasting in my oven.

After brining it in my refrigerator for several days, I scored the skin and laid it in a roasting pan atop a bed of sliced onions. It’s been an hour; I can hear it beginning to sizzle. The aroma is starting to get to me.

This is the way cooking goes in Fergus Henderson’s book “The Whole Beast.� Ingredients you’ve never thought about buying are transformed by the simplest techniques into something approaching ambrosia. But it’s not a book for everyone. In fact, someone described it as a cookbook full of dishes guests won’t eat, calling for ingredients you can’t find and cooking that takes hours, if not days.

It is true that Henderson’s focus on often-ignored parts and recipes does require time for brining, braising and roasting. But any cook who cares enough to put forth a little effort will be amply rewarded.

The ingredients may be hard to find, but they’re there if you look. I shopped at a Chinese market for pork belly, pig’s tails and duck gizzards. Mexican carnicerias are a good source, as are Middle Eastern markets.

Henderson is very much a pat-you-on-the-back-and- shove-you-into-the-deep-end kind of guy when it comes to recipes. The instructions for a dish with duck gizzards, for example, are almost whimsical. He tells you to “get a frying pan very hot, pop in your knob of butter, followed by the [gizzards] ... apply a splash of balsamic vinegar and chicken stock, season ... and let the [gizzards] get to know the liquor.�

The first time I tried it, the pan was too hot. The gizzards browned too quickly, and when

I splashed in the balsamic vinegar, there was one of those whooshes of flame that look so dramatic on “Iron Chef� but that you really don’t want to see in your own kitchen.

I tried it again at slightly lower heat, and the results were impressive. The gizzards were moist and extremely ducky.

The sauce had reduced to a sweet-sour syrup that complemented them nicely.

“The Whole Beast� offers many similar learning experiences.

I picked up the marrowbones for the roast bone marrow and parsley salad at a fancy market. They came with big ball joints attached, which, I learned, limits the amount of marrow you can extract. You need to have both ends of the bone cut away to be able to get all the good stuff. You can bet I’ll ask for that next time. And you can bet there will be a next time: Served on toast with a tart little salad of chopped parsley and capers, this was delicious.

If you are a fan of the pig, you have to try the crispy pig’s tails: Braise pig’s tails, cool them, roll them in breading and then roast them until they’re golden. These are the most unbelievably porky things you’ve ever tasted, with just the right ratio of mustardy breading, fat and flesh. They are also so rich that even I, who bow to no man in my affection for pork, could eat just one.

The belly just came out of the oven. After a brief pass under the broiler to finish the crisping, the skin is mahogany brown and crunchy. The fat layer underneath is melting. The bottom stratum of meat is tender and chewy. It is a salty, crisp, meaty pork bomb, and it is a dish you’d never find in almost any other cookbook.

-- Russ Parsons