"And I like asking questions, to keep learning; people with big egos might not want to look unsure." -- Heston Blumenthal
Heston Marc Blumenthal OBE (born 27 May 1966 in London, raised in Buckinghamshire) is the chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the village of Bray in Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009, and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005. His restaurant has been a perennial runner-up to Ferran Adrià of El Bulli in the world rankings, achieving 2nd place in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, and 3rd in 2010. Blumenthal () is famous for his scientific approach and has been described as a culinary alchemist for his innovative style of cooking. The opening of Blumenthal's much-anticipated first London restaurant, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental, will open in 2011.
"A lot of country pubs will receive Michelin stars.""Being branded number one restaurant in the world is actually very humbling.""But most is all to do with work. There are aspects of work that are enjoyable, that you could call a hobby.""I am not the world's most confident person.""I have this desire to keep improving, so I find fault.""I was determined that if I failed it wouldn't be due to lack of effort.""I would try doing a dish 30 different ways.""I've got around 400 cookbooks.""If it doesn't taste good it doesn't go on the menu.""It was not easy with a newborn, asking your wife to give up the family home and your security.""It was quite a challenge to make people eat crab ice cream.""No, when I worked as an accountant I was falling asleep waiting for 5 o'clock.""Now my complaint is there are only 18 hours to work in a day.""Television forces people to be larger than life. I would be too shy.""We sunk everything into it. It came close to going under several times.""We were saving, saving, saving then going to France and blowing the money eating. She was a nurse and had never experienced fine dining but she loved it, too. Our mates thought it absurd.""What gets me excited is the original principle.""You know how sad your life is when you know the release date of DVDs.""You need to do the work to bring the money in, but not compromise standards."
Heston Blumenthal attended the John Hampden Grammar School, High Wycombe and Latymer Upper School, London. Apart from a week's work experience in Raymond Blanc's kitchen and a short time in Marco Pierre White's, he is self-taught. According to an interview with The Observer in 2004, he has been cooking "seriously" since the mid-1990s. In that year he sold his share in Riverside Brasserie to colleague Garrey Dawson, having two years earlier invested in the nearby Riverside Brasserie with former Arsenal FC footballer Lee Dixon and Alfie Hitchcock.
Books
Blumenthal has had four books published: Family Food: A new approach to cooking in 2004, Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection in 2006 ((in which he attempts to find the best way of preparing classic dishes, including fish and chips and Black Forest gateau), Heston Blumenthal: Further Adventures In Search of Perfection in 2007 and The Big Fat Duck Cook Book in 2008 published by Bloomsbury. His take on traditional British cuisine is served at the Hinds Head Hotel near the Fat Duck.
Television shows
In 2005 he produced a series of six half-hour television programmes called Kitchen Chemistry with Heston Blumenthal which were transmitted on Discovery Science along with a book Kitchen Chemistry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry and distributed to 6,000 schools in the UK and Ireland. He was ranked 3rd chef by caterersearch.com in that year.
This was followed by two BBC series called Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection and Heston Blumenthal: Further Adventures In Search of Perfection. These series had higher production values, and followed Blumenthal's research and varied re-creation of classic British cuisine. The first series had seven episodes and included bangers and mash, fish and chips and spaghetti Bolognese; the second ran to eight episodes, and featured chicken tikka masala, hamburgers and Peking duck.
Blumenthal signed a two-year deal with Channel 4 in March 2008, joining the channel's roster of celebrity chefs which already included Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Gordon Ramsay. In January 2009 a 3-part series of television programmes on Channel 4 covered his efforts to revamp the menu at a Little Chef motorway restaurant on the A303 road at Popham in the hope that his recipe ideas would be introduced in all 193 outlets. A follow-up programme was broadcast in October 2009. In March 2009 Blumenthal began a short series of 45 minute programmes, called Heston's Feasts, showing Victorian, Medieval, Tudor, Christmas (including dormouse and venison) and Roman themed dinner banquets with various celebrities as guests. A second series of this was commissioned and began a few days after Easter 2010. In this series he created, among others, a Charlie and The Chocolate Factory style feast, a Fairytale feast and an Edwardian style feast based on the last meal eaten on the Titanic.
In the "Chili Con Carne" episode of the series In Search of Perfection he said that he was unable to participate in the MRI study of chili's effect on the brain as he had a metal plate inserted in his back after hurting it falling off a roof at the age of ten.
Channel 4 series The IT Crowd (4th season final episode, July 2010) cited Heston Blumenthal and The Fat Duck (parodied The Flappy Duck), along with its unusual food recipes. Douglas Reynholm (a character of the show played by Matt Berry) says he's eaten a working chocolate radio and a flat chicken (which was actually a glass of water) in Heston Blumenthal's restaurant.
Blumenthal is a proponent of modern cooking; he opened his own research and development kitchen in early 2004. It could be said that he is a molecular gastronomist, though he dislikes the term, believing it makes the practice sound "complicated" and "elitist."
One of his signature techniques is the use of a vacuum jar to increase expansion of bubbles during food preparation. This is used in such dishes as an aerated chocolate soufflé—like dessert. The reduction in air pressure inside the jar causes bubbles to grow to a larger size. He has experimented with amplification to enhance the sounds, such as the crunch, created while eating various foods.
Blumenthal is a proponent of low temperature, ultra—slow cooking, whereby a joint of meat is cooked for up to 24 hours so as to contain the fat content while preventing collagen molecules from re-forming within the meat. In his In Search of Perfection series, he cooks a Bresse chicken at 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit). Ultra-slow cooking does not melt the fat or release many juices, making the creation of gravy impossible, but Blumenthal says that gravy is unnecessary as the meat itself is sufficiently moist.
Blumenthal is also a proponent of the Sous-vide cooking technique. Sous-vide, which means "under vacuum" in French is a technique that entails cooking something that has been vacuum sealed in a plastic bag. The sealed bag is placed in a thermostatically controlled water bath and held at a relatively low temperature for long periods of time. In the case of Beef steak cooked using the Sous-vide method, the steak is held at around 60° Celsius or 140° Fahrenheit for a minimum of thirty minutes. The steak is then removed from the bag and is then seared in a very hot pan. Searing the outside of the steak not only improves the flavour and texture of the meat, it also kills the harmful bacteria on the outside of the steak that survived the water bath.
Blumenthal's signature dishes include snail porridge and parsnip cereal.
Blumenthal and his Fat Duck restaurant have been credited as instigators of the bacon dessert "craze". He was preparing sweet and savory bacon-and-egg ice cream as early as 2004, and news "about the intriguingly odd confection quickly spread through the food world."
Blumenthal has collaborated with scientists, including:
Professor Peter Barham, Professorial Teaching Fellow in Physics at Bristol University and author of the book The Science of Cooking
Professor Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford, with whom he collaborated in experiments with the use of headphones during eating
Professor Andy Taylor at the University of Nottingham with whom Blumenthal has sponsored a PhD studentship
Professors Don Mottram and Margot Gosney of the University of Reading, which in 2006 awarded Blumenthal an honorary degree.
The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is a 532 page cookbook written mostly by Blumenthal. The book is divided into 3 parts. The first part contains an essay by Blumenthal recounting his history and that of The Fat Duck. The story is interspersed with semi-abstract illustrations by artist Dave McKean, relating to the story. The second part contains recipes, all of which were at one point on the menu at The Fat Duck, as well as a short story explaining the inspiration behind each dish. The third part is devoted to the science of cooking, with essays contributed by his collaborators.
