Heston's Fantastical Feasts by Heston Blumenthal
Delve into the mind of a culinary genius
Robyn Lewis
Heston's Fantastical Feasts [©Allen and Unwin]
I doubt you need me to tell you this, but some of chef Heston Blumenthal's recent culinary creations seem almost from another planet — a number in Heston's Fantastical Feasts certainly are!
Blumenthal, described as a 'culinary alchemist' for the gastronomic creations served at his restaurant The Fat Duck, is not only a man from Mars with a penchant for pyromania, but is Saturnine as well, using liquid nitrogen with the familiarity that we earthlings might use water.
They say the only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys. Well, Blumenthal has kitchen toys that most of use can only dream of, and are likely never to need, and chemicals that would put most school laboratories to shame. 'Do not try this at home' is his constant advice, given with a knowing look, and as much as I like a good fire myself, I won't be flambéing a chocolate cake housing a billowing tower of propane-filled dishwashing liquid bubbles any time soon.
Heston Blumenthal, who apart from some short work experience with modern culinary legends Raymond Blanc and Marco Pierre White, is proudly a self-taught chef. He was born in London of a former South African father, and his 70s childhood seemed largely unremarkable judging by the photos and memories captured in that era's chapter of Fantastical Feasts. He attended schools in High Wycombe and London without blowing up either.
So, what happened? How did this young gap-toothed boy who grew up in the age of white bread, spam, 'spectacularly flavourless tomatoes', spaghetti and macaroni cheese, when olive oil was sold by pharmacists as earwax remover, become the world's leading culinary creationist?
I don't know, and when I met him last year, he was too busy being a gentleman and holding the door open so I could carry through some boxes that I didn't even think to ask. I suppose Roald Dahl might have appeared outwardly normal, too.
However, Blumenthal is clearly a perfectionist, an intellectual, a nice person, a mad scientist, a practical man and somewhat of an exhibitionist all in one. Unusual combination. Perhaps like Salvador Dali's, his parents never uttered the word no at home, but rather encouraged him to follow his dreams, no matter how outlandish? His innate creativity seems never to have learnt the existence of 'the boundaries' that we modern parents are repeatedly told we must instil in our offspring.
Luckily for both Blumenthal and us he was not fettered with such constraints, and that the Darwin Awards were yet to be invented. A creative genius was let loose into the unsuspecting world's kitchen. The results are now in Heston's Fantastical Feasts.
Blumenthal's mind seems that of a bowerbird, collecting historical facts and legends, weaving them with organic chemical formulae, inspirations from artistic masters, engineering specifications, psychological insights, tastes and memories, perceptions and ideas, and processing them all into that hitherto unlikeliest of high art forms: edible creations. All this presumably without LSD. He's a bowerbird with the smarts.
I grew up around the same era as Blumenthal, and I frequently lamented that unlike 'real' art, my creativity in the kitchen was consumed within 15 minutes — to me it seemed so pointless, with nothing to show for all that imagination and effort except the chore of washing up. That is no longer the case. Firstly cooking magazines and illustrated cookbooks appeared; now YouTube, the internet and TV food shows have extended food's audience and creative life span dramatically. Food is now centre stage, chefs can become kings.
The wider dining public became aware of Blumenthal back in 2004, when his savoury bacon-and-egg ice cream, low-pressure aerated soufflés and the Fat Duck signature dishes of snail porridge and parsnip cereal earned the restaurant three Michelin stars in near record time. But these dishes have turned out to be mere entrées to his mind.
His Big Fat Duck cookbook appeared in 2008, breaking new ground in combining recipes (formulae?) with culinary essays and scientific principles, illustrated with delightful caricatures of Blumenthal 'gliding through a dreamland of food' — and smashing cookbook price records at US$250. In between he picked up an OBE.
Blumenthal's food of 2010 is not just about novel taste combinations, it's visual mimicry and imitation, textures, theatre, smell and sound as well. Nothing is as it seems. High art indeed. I'd be swooning along with Jonathan Daddia for sure if I ever get to meet Heston in his three Michelin star restaurant, let alone experience his 'Sounds of the Sea', or whatever sensory wonder he conjures up next.
He now has a range of highly trained assistants/chefs, a laboratory full of centrifuges and other scientific equipment, a TV crew with an equal taste for adventure and recklessness, backed by a pretty big production budget to indulge his fantasies. The results have not been seen since live birds flew from mediaeval pies or Carême's confections wowed the rich and royal of the early 1800s.
In the first TV series Feast, Blumenthal studied old 'recipes' (usually very scanty on detail or method), copied the presentations in still life paintings, tested, invented, redesigned and then recreated Victorian, Tudor and Roman banquets in forms that would appeal to a sophisticated modern palate. Throw in vibrating jellies and a bit of Alice in Wonderland and it was pretty out there.
Of course, Heston's Fantastic Feasts and with it the second TV series takes this several steps further. Drawing on Grimm's fairytales, Roald Dahl's 60's classic children's book Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which his developing brain surely absorbed), the sinking of the Titanic (Edwardian excess, of course!), Gothic horror and rather surprisingly, the time warp eras of the 70s and 80s, Blumenthal's mind goes into culinary creative overdrive.
You don't watch the series or buy the book to learn to cook, or even to improve your culinary skills. You do so to be amazed, inspired and to wander in the labyrinth of his mind. But whilst the TV shows touch upon his creative process and methods, the book bares all.
Each chapter is like sitting down with Blumenthal in a pub for an evening, and having him tell you all about it, from the insurers not providing cover to use fly agaric (a 'magic mushroom'), to renting dodgy cars in Transyvania, cutting up Barbie dolls (don't ask), model airplanes and their role in food, how to make lickable wallpaper, eating wild boar's eyeballs, disguising cock's testes as jelly beans, and gorging leeches with goose blood… Not your average night out.
What I really love is how he experiments. Many of his initial ideas are total failures, either tasting so appalling that random members of the public can't swallow them even in full view of the cameras and a guaranteed 15 seconds of fame, or collapsing like a drunken engineer's folly. But these only lead to another offshoot idea or five, and like the perfectionist he is, he tries, tries and tries again until it works, and is: perfect.
Blumenthal writes like a narrator — perhaps the words are all his own, perhaps they aren't; it doesn't matter. They are not simply the film script, but are conversational self-insights into the mind of a man the likes of which we haven't seen on the world food stage for a very long time. He could only be the product of eccentric England.
One thing's for sure — I'll stop saying no to my daughter when she mixes mud, rosemary leaves, orange flower water, bluetac, pelargonium petals and a daffodil and presents it to me as her latest cake. I'll even help her bake it.
Mad scientist/Guy Fawkes hybrid or not, I'm glad Blumenthal is on planet earth, and that we live in an era where such culinary creativity is once again possible, fêted and applauded, and can reach around the world.
Long live The King. Whatever will he think of next?
Heston's Fantastical Feasts by Heston Blumenthal (Bloomsbury, London 2010, hc, 320 pp) is distributed in Australia by Allen and Unwin, and retails for RRP A$55.
Members and subscribers of VisitVineyards.com and WinePros Archive can purchase Heston's Fantastical Feasts here at 12.5% discount from our book partners Seekbooks (postage extra).
Other titles by Heston Blumenthal including the casebound and popular editions of The Fat Duck Cookbook are also available here from Seekbooks at 12.5% discount (postage extra).
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