I take it as both an responsibility, and motivating, personal endeavour to reflect on the myriad of ways to consider, approach eating and cooking with offal: culinary, ethical, spiritual, environmental, biological, nutritional, financial... Food, being one of the fundamentals of life, inevitably weaves itself into these other never-ending areas of debate and development. The way we approach and understand food impacts us - our 'fundamental' survival - and equally is a reflection of how we decide to survive; our approach and understanding of how to live.
I am always looking for new ideas and expressions on this, and recently came across a superbly-curated panel discussion from 2006 (I was 9 years old at this time, by the way), titled 'Guts & Glory', mediated by the iconic Anthony Bourdain, along with modern Godfather of Nose to Tail eating, Fergus Henderson, and highly knowledgeable chef Chris Cosentino, hailing from San Francisco. Henderson says something that I've found myself feeling and expressing precisely for so many years, building and building upon the essential part of eating living things:
"The heart expresses the nature of the animal it comes from like nothing else...
The heart of the matter really is the heart, that's where all the flavour is..."
And, to me, this 'flavour' really is both in the culinary sense and in a spiritual, ethical sense. If there is such a thing as 'soul' in food, or when it comes to eating meat, of the 'animal' post-mortem, then it can be found and understood to be contained in the essential, inner parts: the heart, the brain, and so on. Bourdain goes on in the panel discussion even to refer to 'enlightened cuisine', describing his thought that within every good cook there's a Chinese man... within this present line of enquiry, I feel he's referring to the fact that the Chinese have always been and remain incredibly resourceful and unperturbed when it comes to using all and any part of an animal that they kill for food. Chicken feet, tripe, and beyond that immediate, many other species of animal all together are cooked and consumed. They do not discriminate between animals, nor their components parts in the pursuit of food and flavour. Neither should we, I don't think. Again, as Fergus Henderson writes in his totemic 'The Complete Nose to Tail':
"Once an animal has been killed, you would be foolish not to make the best use of every single delicious part. It is simply the right thing to do."
The impact Henderson's words and ideas have comes much from the astounding simplicity and humility in which he expresses them. There is no pretence in trying to re-glorify a medieval past of eating offal, nor trying to re-invent the wheel of cooking or art or extravagant, stunt-fuelled restaurant glamour. Offal, and breaking down an animal into component parts of guts, bones and flesh, really is unglamorous and really is hard work in hard environments. But it remains a skilled, dexterous and choreographed process that requires as much determined force as it does carefulness and sensitivity.
Death is brutal, too, and is perhaps the reality most sought to be shunned when eating and cooking with meat altogether for a lot of us. It is a butcher's, a chef's, and I really think also an eater's responsibility to respect and show gratitude to this in how they consume whatever has had to face it. There is disgust at the idea of death, at the sight for some of the redundant yet still vivid organs following the death, yet some remarkable transition occurs when the carcass is broken down into smaller, reconstructed parts, to suddenly become 'food' and 'edible' and more so, 'appetising'. People come into our butcher shop and every now and then inevitably ask for something we've not yet cut. I've brought out the front-half of a whole lamb before, and had a customer actively turn their whole posture and gaze away from having to look at it, exclaiming with ironic sheepishness:
"Ooh, no, I really don't like seeing it so associated with the whole animal itself - seeing it like that makes me feel all funny".
Almost immediately I heard my internal monologue respond with: 'Well, if that's the case, why are you in here?' Never to be rude, more to re-address the actual point of 'us' of eating meat - some 'other' or past 'lifeform' - and why we buy it from a local, high-welfare, responsibly-sourced independent butcher's shop. It is so significant to re-establish the connection, to place yourself in a situation and within a way of living and consuming where you will see exactly to this extent what the meat you eat really is 'made' of. Eating meat, buying meat, demands deaths. The animals from which the meat comes from have legs, a heart, a liver, kidneys, a brain, a belly... just like us.
As the 'Guts & Glory' panel discussion I referred to continues, Henderson reminisces of visits to an island off the far coast of Scotland, where cattle roam free grazing on wild thyme and flowers, while butchers have the special and specific right to slaughter them there and then. Because the animal is first all of in a totally natural, idyllic environment, and because they have none of the amounts of stress or fearful anticipation as when they're bundled into a trailer, methodically arranged and 'sent to slaughter', the nature of their death and thus their 'afterlife' as meat, is essentially the 'best' possible given the circumstances. Henderson talks of a "happiness chain":
"When you know the animal's happy, the butcher's happy, when chef's come to butcher it they understand the carcass, they can have a relationship with it, then their happiness comes in the cooking and eating... you've imbued the dish with happiness"
Truths, such as those above, really are meant to help towards re-establishing a happiness chain, or at least acceptance and authenticity chain between 'us' and our 'meat' - a binary I actually would like to almost do away with, in the sense that they are both 'animals'. I really believe that this thought alone can provide further thoughts and then actions and feelings to contribute to a better lifestyle for all. This can then also be considered across life overall - so including vegetation, flora and fauna - whatever 'living' lives, though particularly those we encouter to create, cook, and eat with.
“Let nature lead the menu rather than you trying to control nature.”
(Fergus Henderson)
I hope to instill and empower you, reading this, that you can access and make something of any of the points discussed above, to manifest your own approach to consuming and eating that feels most 'you', and most respectfully 'human' (and by that I mean, can bring you closer to the wonderful humble human 'animal' that you are - whether you like that you are or not).
And, of course, I hope it inspires you to try offal, that's why I'm here...
If you need any more inspiration - get in touch!
Lastly, here is the link to the 'Guts & Glory' Panel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m69D7llzz2A
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