Mr Cook Talks About Famous Chefs - Heston Blumenthal Biography

Heston Blumenthal Biography

Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal is the man who turned the world of cuisine on its head and became a national hero with an OBE and three Michelin stars. Here, for the first time, is the full inspirational story of this enthusiastic, self-taught genius. Heston is a gastronomic alchemist who sees the kitchen as a laboratory where he loves to experiment for new ways to tantalise the taste-buds of diners at his Fat Duck restuarant. This biography traces his journey from a life-changing childhood holiday in France, through to his brief apprenticeship in Raymond Blanc's restaurant where he stood up to a kitchen bully. It then follows him as - constantly pushing the boundaries of his work - he reached the top of his profession and received an OBE from the Queen.

Biography

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 footballers Lee Dixon and Alfie Hitchcock.

Blumenthal has four books published: Family Food: A new approach to cooking in 2004, Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection in 2006, Heston Blumenthal: Further Adventures In Search of Perfection in 2007 (in which he attempts to find the best way of preparing classic dishes, including fish and chips and Black Forest gateau) 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.

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 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 will be creating, 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.

Cooking Style

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."

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