"It was the hardest thing I’ve done in my career" Adam Handling on his debut book collection

10-Feb-2023 - Last updated on 13-Feb-2023 at 16:07 GMT

Image: Jason Alfred Palmer

The Frog chef has published a boxset of three recipe books that tell his story, the journey of his restaurant group, and the ethos of sustainability that underpins it all.

You’ve released a beautiful collection of books. Tell us about them

There are three books in the set. One is called Frog by Adam Handling and it tells the story of the restaurant, one is called Why Waste?, which looks at my approach to sustainability, and one is Perfect, Three Cherries, which is a cocktail book based on the recipes we have created at Eve Bar. That is named after my favourite cocktail, a perfect Manhattan, made with three Maraschino cherries.

One book sounds like hard work. Why have you written three at once?

It was my intention to only write one book about Frog but it grew from there. I wanted to show not just the industry but also the world what my group is all about, and that includes Eve Bar and my approach to sustainability both at Frog (his Michelin-starred restaurant in Covent Garden) and Ugly Butterfly (Handling’s sustainable restaurant in Cornwall). The Why Waste? book was never part of the original plan, but it just made the Frog book too big. I didn’t want an encyclopaedic book that was 700 pages long, so I took all of the waste recipes out and put them into a new book. To understand what Frog is, you need to understand the waste element, the foraging, the sustainability, provenance of ingredients, everything. It became clear that there really was no Frog book without the other two.

It looks like it was a large undertaking...

It took 10 years to write and was the hardest thing I’ve done in my career. I ripped the Why Waste? book up at least four times, and the cocktail book more times than I can ever imagine - only because the vision in my mind and what went on paper just didn’t work for a long time.

Who is the book collection for?

It’s for chefs but also for people who care about food. It is designed for my younger self; it’s everything I would have wanted to know when I was starting out in my career. It’s the stuff that people don’t see behind the scenes – the researching, the training, the things we had to do to make Frog what it is today. If you say you want to stop using vanilla than Why Waste? shows you that there are so many different ingredients in the UK that have a similar flavour. It’s the same for almonds and coconuts. The book is also a foraging guide.

Are Frog by Adam Handling and Why Waste? both recipe books?

They both contain recipes, but they are very different in their approach. Frog is all about the recipes that are part of the restaurant and have been with me for many years. We serve a dish of a waffle with caviar and cream and maple syrup and I’m now seeing it in other restaurants. Although I’m honoured that people are doing dishes like that, and like my cheese doughnuts and lobster aged in wagyu fat, I asked my why I don’t have a book with all my recipes in. It was also inspired by a review of my pub The Loch & The Tyne (in Windsor) in The Telegraph that said the chicken butter had been inspired by Tom Aikens (the article said it ‘was just as sinfully delicious as the chicken butter at Tom Aikens’ Michelin-starred Muse in London’), and I thought ‘that’s interesting’. Chicken butter has been on my menu before I even had Frog but when I worked at Caxton 10 years ago. I was honoured that I was inspiring chefs who inspired me, but I wanted to make sure the recipes worked.

How is Why Waste? different?

With Why Waste? it doesn’t so much reference a dish but instead the ingredient and what can be done with it. It deals with ingredients that are found and foraged, such as lobsters – you can’t grow them you have to fish for them. For example, with lobsters most chefs use the tail and claws and sometimes the knuckles, but they don’t use the tomalley – either the brown from the head or green from the tail. The book shows what you can do with the whole ingredient (such as make tomalley chimichurri; lobster bones powder) and then we have created recipes showing how you can utilise them in dishes.

How did the collection come into being?

I was approached by [publisher] Away With Media who asked me if I wanted to do it. I told them my vision and they said they would help me. They funded the whole book.

How are its sales so far?

It has been incredible; we made a third of the cost of the book in one month in December in pre sales – we sold thousands from all over the world. I had forecasted to get £2,000 of revenue of books in the first month but we sold £70,000 worth. You can buy them individually (from £30 - £70), or as the set (£160) from our website.

Do you have plans for any more books?

I want to try and do a cookbook for the home, that’s the next goal. But I find it very difficult to write recipes like that.

What’s happening at your restaurants?

We’ve just reopened Frog by Adam Handling having closed it for a few weeks for a refurb. We’ve brought in new tables and new art and have created a new booth area in the space that was home to the pastry section. We’ve built a bakery kitchen above the restaurant which has freed up space in the dining room. Eve Bar downstairs has also been refurbished, with the creation of a lab room where we can really experiment. A new drink that is going on our new menu at the end of the month uses the fat we skim off the top when making veal stock. We blend that through gin to fat wash it and will be serving it as a Bone Marrow Martini. It tastes like bone marrow on toast.