The secret to cooking dog is to get the meat nice and tender while minimising that unique dog meat smell. You need to simmer it for a long time and make sure the temperature’s just right. Judging the temperature is a matter of experience, but you can tell from the colour of the meat as it simmers. I like to cook the meat with homemade jang (miso paste) made from locally grown beans. My mother taught me to make tan, a dish of dog meat and juices stewed together with vegetables, and I haven’t changed the recipe for 23 years. But if you want the real taste of the meat, you should try Korean favourites like the steamed dish soo-yuk, or geon-pol – a hotpot of dog simmered with sesame leaves and vegetables. These are usually eaten with a dipping sauce made of rice vinegar, chili, soy sauce and sesame. Dog meat is rich in unsaturated fat and easy to digest. According to traditional Korean medicine, it’s a ‘cold’ food good for overcoming summer heat exhaustion. It’s also said to help convalescents after operations, and it’s recommended when recovering from burns. Some animal lovers object to eating dog, but we don’t cook ‘pets;’ we use special food breeds raised for their meat. Some people might have different social or cultural views, but eating dog meat is an authentic Korean tradition that goes back hundreds of years. That’s why I take pride in cooking it.

You’ll find horsemeat in any supermarket in Kumamoto Prefecture. That’s where 80 percent of Japan’s horsemeat comes from, and the area is said to get through more horsemeat than beef. It’s high in protein, low calorie and low in fat – in fact, it only has one-tenth the fat content of beef, and one-fifth that of pork, so it really is a healthy meat. It’s also rich in iron and minerals, so it oxidizes easily and turns a light pink colour as soon as you take it out of the fridge. That’s why we call it cherry blossom meat. They eat horse in France and Italy, but they eat the lean cuts over there so it wouldn’t make good sashimi – you need the fat to soften it up. Raw horsemeat is particularly easy to eat. Even marbled horsemeat has a light, fresh taste. If you had a double helping of beef it would sit really heavily on your stomach, but you’d have no problem with horsemeat. You can gauge the quality of the meat from the colour of both the flesh and fat, and how firm it is. Unlike pork, horsemeat shouldn’t be left to age, and all refrigerated meat dries out and loses its flavour. However, because the flesh starts to soften as soon as it’s butchered, it’s best to refrigerate it for a day before tucking in.

I started off rolling ants into sushi – like maki. Then I made a banana, honey and orange smoothie with ants inside. That was quite popular. We import our ants from China. They’re very convenient to use because they come cleaned and desiccated. They look like caviar. All I have to do is integrate them into my food preparation. Ants are very dry and acidic – you really use them as seasoning. They contain a lot of formic acid so when you bite them you feel a kind of acid crush. I did a coconut macaroon with ants that was popular because the sweetness and smoothness of coconuts is reversed by the little acid touch of ants. It’s a myth that people eat insects because they’ve nothing else to eat. A lot of insects are very, very expensive. In Mexico they eat ant eggs which are more expensive than caviar; and they’re delicious. I heard that Hirohito was eating ants at the end of his life. Insects aren’t disgusting if you compare them to a lot of food that we enjoy. Shrimp and lobsters clean the ocean, and we love them. But many of the insects we eat are vegan, so in a way they’re cleaner. It’s really cultural. In China they make wine with ants and use them for seasoning. Actually they eat them so much that one species is in danger of extinction.

I think pigeon is the best poultry you can eat anywhere. Pigeon’s very low calorie – healthier than most meat. It’s tasty, it’s tender, it’s wholesome, and it’s rich. There’s a richness about the flavour which no other poultry has, neither duck nor chicken nor guinea fowl, so it’s my favourite poultry. When you’re given such a fantastic ingredient like pigeon it’s such a joy because you have the very, very best. The squab has been on the menu (at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons) for a number of years in different guises. My signature dish effectively is a squab cooked in a salt crust. The squab is seared to melt down the fat outside, and then it’s wrapped into salt pastry – completely crafted, completely sculptured. The salt crust has got a tremendous role to play, because it completely wraps up the pigeon, so there’s a slow build up of heat inside – unlike roasting where it’s a very strong heat and the muscle structure gets very tense. The easiest way to ruin squab is too much heat. Too much heat for too long and, of course, you slaughter it. It’s very, very difficult (to identify a quality pigeon). First of all, the beak and feet should be very tender and pliable. That means the squab is no more than three months old. It should have a nice plump breast and a slightly yellow skin, which means it has been fed a mixture of cereal, corn and a little bit of rice. And when the pigeon is about 500 grams you have something rather special.