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: #3073 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Synopsis
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.

Customer Reviews

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!

Contextualising Kitchen Classics.
Reading this book, it is difficult not to get caught up in Blumenthal's obsessive quest. Whether seeking the perfect chocolate, steak or potato, he writes engagingly about produce and flavour, and his travels to meet with chefs, producers and restaurant owners add a journeying element to his culinary explorations. Throughout the book he provides context and history, which broaden the scope of each dish and add cultural dimensions. It is extremely refreshing to read a cookery book that takes British staple foods for its main source. Fish and Chips, Chicken and Potatoes, Bangers and Mash and Black Forest Gateaux - while all having some foreign influences - are revised through Heston Blumenthal's fastidiousness, science and passion. And he tracks the past of each meal, explaining why it has become a staple, where it came from and so on. It is an interesting juxtaposition of elements; English, childhood memories of food reacreated via state-of-the-art equipment and scientific technique. The humble spud, for instance, is revisited several times throughout the book and scientifically analysed for dry-matter content, water-content etc., depending on whether the potato in question will eventually be used for mash, chips or roast.

Another fantastic aspect of In Search of Perfection is Heston Blumenthal's remarks about produce and sustainability. Throughout the book he emphasises the importance of using high-quality ingredients, building an impassioned and detailed case for supporting small producers who love and are proud of what they make. He writes with incredible respect and knowledge about the producers from whom he buys, acknowledging constantly his trade's dependence on what farmers, butchers, chocolatiers and pasta-makers create. He also talks about the importance of raising animals humanely, arguing against the immorality as well as the inferior flavour of intensive farming. This is becoming a more common perspective from chefs, but Blumenthal's book brings in a new element - at least for me - in that its focus is not on grand dishes with names we've never heard of before, but on familiar foods that most of us will have eaten. In this respect I find the book very accessible.

Of course in other respects, it is a ridiculously inaccessible book. For how many of us can afford to travel to France to buy a Bresse chicken, or put the time into brining and roasting it according to his suggested (and lengthy) method? And how many of us can afford to make ice-cream using dry-ice, which can apparently be purchased only in a 10kg despatch and which cannot be stored? And while sustainability is a constant focus for the book, every dish in it appears to have an extortionate number of airmiles on it and an enormous carbon-footprint.

Yet despite these flaws in In Search of Perfection, I am won over in the end by the earnest quality of the book. Descriptions of memories of food and a commitment to excellence at all stages in production make this an utterly worthwhile read. What I loved most of all was how reading the book invested dishes I thought I knew how to cook with new dimensions. History, context and science have been woven into things I've eaten all my life, and this makes them richer for me.

I think it would be a fascinating undertaking to assemble all the ingredients for one of the dishes and to cook it down to the letter according to one of the recipes in the book. But like a visit to The Fat Duck, this would be something of a milestone in my own explorations of food, cookery and flavour, and certainly a once-off-treat rather than something to do every day. In this respect I would describe the book as a culinary exploration, rather than a useful or practical cookery book.

On the other hand, recipe books everywhere will be enhanced by the background, science and detail provided in this book and reading it will definitely inspire you to begin recreating your own sense of perfection in the kitchen.