Being Fergus Henderson: Breakfast radishes and butter

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Breakfast radishes and butter

From "The Whole Beast"

It does not get any easier than this. Breakfast radishes and butter. I have tried them before, and I just didn't get it and I have to admit I still don't. Why would you eat radishes with butter? What does the butter add to the radish and vice versa?

There's not much you can do to this dish, so I made a quenelle of the butter and sprinkled some flake salt coated in ash. It was alright, but no big revelation. Not that everything has to be a revelation, but this was just underwhelming. And there it is.

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The reason for this blog

Fergus Henderson is to me the essence of what a chef should be. I have never eaten at his restaurant (St. John Bar and Restaurant), but it will happen some day. I hope. I first heard about him not too long ago. It was 2004, when the restaurant was already 10 years old (the same as TFL at the time), and my then chef, Thomas Keller, had been to London for work or to do a demo or tasting, not sure. That had been one of his stops. I heard one of the cooks at the Laundry say that if he could work anywhere in the world, it would be at St. John. This is from someone who already had a coveted position on the line at one of the best restaurants in the world. So why this place? What was so special about Mr. Henderson and St. John that would compel someone to go make that statement?
Me, being in pastry and breads, had never heard of this place. At that time I didn't give it much more thought and I put it on the back burner, until 2007, when his second book was published. I bought it mostly because I was intrigued and wanted to see what the fuss was about. And I soon realized what it was: this food was, at least on paper, perfect. Which prompted me to purchase the first book, published in 2004. I did it backwards, but in a sense it doesn't matter. The chef takes the most humble ingredients and manipulates them to become more than they could have ever hoped for. That is the craft of a chef. Taking commonplace ingredients and making them great with little manipulation. Some of the savory items in my upcoming book (The Modern Cafe, Wiley & Sons, 2010) are very much inspired by Mr. Henderson, without being exact replicas (can't do that, that is very bad form) they are heavily influenced by him and other chefs such as Tom Colicchio and restaurants such as Blue Ribbon Soho, Balthazar and Prune, my favorite restaurants in NYC.
So this is the essence of this blog:
I have never met Mr. Henderson, but I hope to some day, just to shake his hand. But most importantly though, I would like to experience St. John in more ways than on paper. So in the meantime, what I am going to try to do, is to replicate, if not every dish in both books, then most of them that could be within my means and logical ambitions, and with all due respect, I won't be trying out the breads and desserts in book number 2, because I am mostly a pastry chef and I think I have those areas well covered, but I want to understand what Mr. Henderson already knows about food, beacuse if I were a cook, I would want to work at St. John as well.

Being Fergus Henderson

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Breakfast radishes and butter

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The reason for this blog

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