Product Description

One of the world's most renowned chefs, Heston Blumenthal has made his name creating such original - and some might say bizarre - dishes as Snail Porridge and Nitrogen Scrambled Egg & Bacon Ice Cream at his internationally acclaimed restaurant, The Fat Duck. Heston decided, though, that it was time to go back to both his and our roots and to focus his creative talent on reinventing some of our most well-known and abused dishes. In order to do this he travelled around the world in search of 'perfect' versions of eight dishes which represent the essence of our culinary heritage: Roast Chicken & Roast Potatoes Pizza Bangers & Mash Steak Spaghetti Bolognese Fish & Chips Black Forest Gateau Treacle Tart & Ice Cream Everybody's idea of 'perfection' is different, and so Heston, drawing on interviews with experts and cooks as well as using his own culinary and scientific research, sets out to discover what makes these standards so great. He explores the origins of each dish, how to find the best ingredients, and of course the many different ways - and whys - of cooking them to perfection.He reveals priceless culinary tips along the way: everything from how to cut potatoes for flawless frying, to what makes the choicest beef, to the secret ingredients in the perfect spaghetti Bolognese, to capturing the essence of a fish and chip shop in a perfume bottle, to making aerated chocolate bars at home with a vacuum cleaner. In Search of Perfection examines the role of food in our lives and memories and is a completely original, inspiring and fascinating exploration of these kitchen classics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1381 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

About the Author
Chef Heston Blumenthal has been described as a culinary alchemist for his innovative style of cuisine. His work researches the molecular compounds of dishes so as to enable a greater understanding of taste and flavour.His restaurant The Fat Duck, in Bray, Berkshire, was awarded three Michelin stars in 2004, and voted the Best Restaurant in the World by an international panel of 500 culinary experts in Restaurant Magazine's The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2005 awards. He also owns the Hinds Head Hotel, a village pub in Bray.Heston Blumenthal lives in Berkshire with his wife and three children.

Customer Reviews

A great accompanyment to a cracking Tv Show!
This book is great! Plain and simple, however, its unlikely im going to convert a paint sprayer to make black forrest gatteau. The book was designed to accompany the tv shows with Heston, and since the shows its still made a great impact. His style and enthusiasm for food is carried over so well within this book.

The photgraphy makes you water at the mouth with anticipation and the finish product atleast on the page looks amazing and i can only guess that it smells just as good!

In all honest ive only attempted part of a recipe and that was for roast potatoes which works fantastically! The rest were just great to read and with his passion it is clear to me why hes running the number 1 restaurant in the world!

A great gift for the enthusiatic cook or follower of food gastronomy but not a cook book per say.

Perfect!
Beyond the search for the perfect dish, it is the journey that is fascinating here.
Heston's approach to identifying what is the perfect steak, the perfect chip, or the perfect tomato is unprecedented. Only engineering books describing the technical aspects of conquest of space come close. So I found this book perfect ... in a mad sort of way.

Interesting, but unattainable perfection
I enjoyed reading this book and picked up a few interesting tips, but, even though I'm a keen cook, the lengths to which Heston Blumenthal goes to to achieve perfection are largely beyond me. His TV programme and book are really entertainment rather than a serious attempt to help we ordinary cooks to improve our cooking skills. At times I felt that he was "using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut" in that the conventional method to cook something achieves very good results, such as making vanilla ice-cream using milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, a vanilla pod and employing an ice-cream making machine to churn it while it freezes. His method of using dry ice is impractical in that you can only buy dry ice in large quantities from specialist suppliers, its expensive, it turns into carbon dioxide gas quickly and its fairly dangerous to deal with!