It’s 11pm, and outside the Fat Duck in Bray, Heston Blumenthal is being
pursued across the road by a young Mancunian chef. He has brought his
girlfriend down south on a culinary pilgrimage and is not leaving without a
souvenir. “Can you sign this for the lads in the kitchen?” he asks,
thrusting a menu into Blumenthal’s hands. The Fat Duck’s proprietor takes
the menu, scribbles his name and draws a sketch of a chef’s knife. “Thanks,
Heston, that’s wicked,” the gastro-fan beams and disappears off into the
night.
Blumenthal is getting used to the autograph hunters. When a panel of
international food pundits voted the Fat Duck the world’s best restaurant in
April, the 39-year-old chef found himself elevated to the status of
gastronomic messiah. In the past six years, his tiny cottage restaurant in
the Berkshire commuter village has picked up three Michelin stars, wowing
critics and diners alike with a menu that includes white chocolate and
caviar, sardine-on-toast sorbet and green-tea and lime mousse “poached” in
liquid nitrogen. After the best-restaurant title, even the tabloids sat up
and took notice. The Sun sent a couple of readers along to sample the £97.50
tasting menu under the predictable headline “Snail porridge? I’d prefer a
Big Mac”.
I mention this when we meet at the Hinds Head, the village pub in Bray, which
he bought last year. There’s no snail porridge on the menu here, just an
upmarket take on British food: oxtail and kidney pudding, pea and ham soup,
lemon sole with spiced shrimp butter. It’s the approachable side of
Blumenthal’s cooking, but still executed with a genius flourish. It is the
porridge, though, that gets the headlines. “They always bring up that, and
the egg-and-bacon ice cream,” he says. “I could have called the porridge
fricassee of snails with oat risotto and nobody would have batted an eyelid.
It’s all the things that classically go with snails: parsley and garlic and
ham and almonds. The only contentious thing is whether you actually eat
snails or not. And egg-and-bacon ice cream — the Victorians had loads of
savoury ice creams. I have a recipe for parmesan ice cream that is 200 years
old.”
His shaved head and stocky frame make him look as if he belongs in an army
catering tent rather than the kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant; it’s
somehow a neat fit with his joke that he was named after Heston services on
the M4, a myth that his blokeish Thames Valley accent does nothing to
dispel. But there is a shy intelligence that comes with it, and an
understated, attractive self-belief. When he puts on his frameless glasses,
Blumenthal comes across — and this must be a first for a chef — as kind of
groovy.
This week, he joins Style as The Sunday Times’ resident chef. So is it going
to be snail porridge? “No,” he says. “I’m going to show people quite a few
of my twists on classic dishes. It would be great if they thought again
about some bits of kitchen wisdom, even if they’re making soup or a plate of
chips. And I want them to think differently about flavour combinations,
texture and temperature. There are lots of simple techniques that really
make a difference in the kitchen. I hope it will stimulate interest, give
people more confidence and allow them to become more creative.”
He might be joining The Sunday Times, but you won’t see Blumenthal on any
expletive-laden reality-TV shows any time soon. The quiet man from Marlow
has kept his feet solidly on the ground — in any case, foodie collaborations
with DJs and fashion designers are more his bag. “I was going to do this big
party in Barcelona with Vivienne Westwood last year. We were going to have
olive and leather puréed on toast and helium-filled balloons with mint, plus
popping candy with headphones so you could listen to the crunch. I got the
DJ Matthew Herbert to do a CD of English sounds. The whole thing was
cancelled at the last minute. I couldn’t believe it. But I’m featured on
Matthew’s new album. There’s this one track where we bashed a grain of sugar
and recorded the sound. And another where I’m recorded eating seven
different ways with pickles. That was fun.”
Sounds incredibly cool. “I’m not at all up on fashion,” he says quickly, as if
he doesn’t want people to think he has got above himself. “I received one of
the GQ men of the year awards last year. The stylist came with a
photographer and this fantastic suit. I thought, ‘My God, this is amazing.’
I looked at the label and it was Brioni. When she told me it was about two
grand, I nearly fell over. She got me a good deal. But it’s my only suit.”
What Blumenthal has above all else is a passion for food. Before opening his
restaurant 10 years ago, he had only ever spent three weeks working in a
professional kitchen. Everything else, he taught himself. He got the
culinary bug after his parents took him to the three Michelin-starred Ostau
de Baumanière, in Provence, when he was 16. “It was a first-time experience
for all of us. The sommelier had a big handlebar moustache and a leather
apron, and there was a proper cheese trolley and people pouring sauces into
soufflés and carving legs of lamb at the table. I was absolutely gobsmacked
by it. And I thought, this is it. I want to try and give this feeling to
other people.” He started to devour cooking manuals and visit food
producers, selling his car to finance trips to restaurants in France and
working as an accounts clerk during the day. A decade later, he was ready.
He and his wife, Susanna, sold their house, moved in with his parents, and
he used the money to buy the Fat Duck.
His use of the science lab to inform his cooking (dubbed “molecular
gastronomy”) has led some to paint him as a kind of culinary Dr
Frankenstein, or the Salvador Dali of the kitchen. “You’ll always get people
who say it’s reducing cooking to a test tube or it’s a gimmick, but they
miss the point. I’m not a scientist, I’m a cook. I’m interested in
understanding what goes on when you cook food and when you eat it.”
He wants children to discover the excitement that food can bring, too. His
book Family Food explained how to get kids involved in the kitchen, based on
his own experience with his children, Jack, 12, Jessica, 10, and Joy, 7.
Last month, with the Royal Society of Chemistry, he launched a new school
subject called kitchen chemistry, which will teach kids how to use liquid
nitrogen to make ice cream and demystify the workings of a microwave oven.
The Establishment loves him — later this year, he will take part in the
prestigious Royal Institution’s Christmas lectures.
“I want to put across to people that this science stuff makes life a lot
easier,” he says. “How many of us have a go at cooking something and it
doesn’t work and we think we’ve messed up? But it could just be that your
oven temperature is 30 degrees out. An oven thermometer could make all the
difference. And a probe.” A probe? “Yeah, a digital probe. You don’t need it
for everything, but say you’re cooking a whole salmon. With a probe, you can
tell if it has reached the right temperature in the middle. It saves you a
headache and makes the whole process much easier.”
Blumenthal’s latest gastro trip is historic food, the big idea behind the menu
at the Hinds Head. “I’ve teamed up with the historians who run the kitchens
at Hampton Court. There are some amazing medieval dishes that have
completely disappeared.” He launches into a description of a dish that
involves plucking a live chicken, basting it with saffron and dripping so
the skin looks cooked, then rocking it to sleep and serving it on a platter
with two real roast chickens. “Apparently, you start carving the cooked
chickens, at which point, the one that looks cooked wakes up, clucks and
runs down the table. Not that I’d suggest doing that, of course. It’s a bit
disturbing really.” He is, however, resurrecting other lost dishes. Quaking
pudding, for instance — a kind of bread-and-milk jelly flavoured with
almonds and spices that wobbles on the plate. “I’ve not had any experience
of silicone implants,” he laughs, “but it’s the same idea.”
Blumenthal still spends his Monday night off with his wife and a takeaway
curry in front of the telly. Has success not changed him at all? “Well, I
did buy a flash car a couple of years ago,” he says. “For years, I had a
£100 Metro van with one green door and one red one. It kept breaking down
and gave everyone carbon-monoxide poisoning. Now I’ve got a BMW M3. It’s the
first real bit of extravagance.” He pauses. “To be honest, I feel very
guilty about it.”
So there you have it: an ordinary guy who makes extraordinary food. Try it for
yourself: his recipes start here
The Fat Duck: 01628 580333. The Hinds Head: 01628 626151
HESTON RULES: 10 WAYS TO BE A BETTER COOK
- Food should excite all the senses. “You taste with your eyes,
ears and nose as well as your mouth.”
- Think contrast. “Try to incorporate opposites into a dish —
raw and cooked, soft and crisp, hot and cold. It makes things a lot more
interesting.”
- Maximise the flavour. “Say you’re making a compote with
cherries or peaches: you can crush the stones and add them in to the fruit
in a muslin bag. It adds another layer of interest.”
- Don’t believe everything people tell you. “You can cook
green veg with a lid on and it won’t discolour. It helps it to cook
more quickly. Using low-calcium water has the same effect; hard water makes
it take longer to cook.”
- What seems obvious isn’t always right. “If you want to
reduce bitterness (in a stock, say), you add salt, not sugar.”
- Sometimes it’s okay for a workman to blame his tools. “Domestic
ovens can be wildly inaccurate. Get a thermometer you can put on the shelf
of your oven and you’ll know exactly what’s going on.”
- Every good cook needs a probe. “They only cost about a tenner
and it means you can cook meat and fish at much lower temperatures and get
it just right.”
- Make sure your scales work properly. “It sounds obvious, but you’d
be surprised how often they’re way out.”
- Use your ears as a kitchen implement. “They can tell you a lot.
For instance, if you’re cooking butter to make a beurre noisette, when
it stops sizzling, it’s ready. Any longer and it’s burnt.”
- Follow your nose. “There’s nothing worse than chopping a
delicate pear with a knife that’s been used for cutting garlic. Sniff
first, cut later.”
