As Glenn Miller tirelessly sought his new sound, my search has always been for a musk; the musk of a good time, which I first encountered as a child emerging in the morning to find the remains of my parents' entertaining the night before: a table littered with half-drunk glasses of wine, candle wax and the ruins of a monumental crème caramel all swathed in the intoxicating fog of spent cigars. My mother was a great cook, my father was a great eater, and these were the carefree times of the late 1960s and early 70s when you went to bed without tidying up. There are seminal moments which shape our lives and change our outlook permanently. This one in particular forever clarified the direction of my life.
The "nose-to-tail" philosophy, which has been so heartily adopted over the past few years, has not been a conscious effort of education, it is for me a byproduct of this search for pleasure. Eating well is a pleasure, and it would be weird not to eat well within nature's restrictions: short, rigorous British seasons administering good things from the earth, air and sea, and flesh beyond a fillet. This is common sense. My intention was never to cry "Woo hoo! Blood and guts!", it was merely to celebrate the wonderful textures and flavours of insides and extremities, because that's what I like to eat. Nature writes our menu and we should listen.
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