Bo Bech treads a different path to that of your average Danish chef. For a start, he doesn't forage. "You don't need to climb a mountain and pick a rare flower in order to cook," he says. "You don't need to ferment something for 700 years."

At Geist, his exuberant, open-kitchen restaurant in the heart of Copenhagen, he shuns drawn-out degustation dining for a more democratic, relaxed a la carte menu and a crush at the bar. "I want life."

His food is brutally minimalist, with no more than three or four ingredients, whether it's a tartare of fallow deer with black figs; mashed potato with brown stone crab and salted butter; blue stilton with chocolate; or a dramatic kaleidoscope of shrimp, tomato and smoked paprika.

Now he has added author, photographer and publisher to his resume with In My Blood, a powerful and personal chef manifesto masquerading as a cook book. Handsomely cloth-bound and weighing 1.6 kilograms, it's a work of art in itself, with dreamy watercolours preceding the 100 stripped-bare recipes. "The beauty is that the sooner you give away your secrets," says Bech, "the sooner you get new ones."

The AFR Magazine is out on Friday November 30 inside The Australian Financial Review.

Follow AFR Mag on Twitter and Instagram