Perfect! - Rated 
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 - Rated 
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. - Rated
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.
You need to be open minded - Rated
Neither the Fat Duck nor the Hinds Head (The authors 2 restaurants) had the Black Forest Gatteau on their menu's and I really wanted to see if something with THAT much thought and effort could taste as good as the TV show would have us believe, so I bought the book to make my own.
The first thing that strikes you about the book is that IT IS NOT a cook book, far from it. It is much more biographical than that and goes to extraordinary lengths to give each of the featured recipes their opportunity to reveal their secrets and explain why they are such classics.
The aforementioned Black Forest "recipe" is in fact maybe only 4 pages long, out of a section of the book that is maybe 40 pages long. Heston uses the rest of the chapter to take you into his world of ingredients, he spends 6 pages walking you round the Amedei chocolate factory near Pisa for example. None of this makes you a better cook but he uses such evocative language that you really feel like you're in the conching room with him and smelling the roasted cocoa beans, It makes you want to do justice to the ingredients you're about to use. For me personally, gaining extra appreciation for ingredients was a fantastic by-product of owning this book.
Think of this as a cooks tour guide book, Heston walks and talks you through the regions that makes claim to inventing the recipes you're exploring on his journey, why specific tomatoes make the best sauce for pizza and why beer makes for a better batter. The book is fantastically well written, he makes very few references to the "sciency bit" that features prominently in the TV show, in fact it makes me feel the Molecular gastronomy title bestowed upon him is somewhat unfair, but you can be the judge of that.
In conclusion, the book is well written, well researched and an enjoyable read irrespective of your intentions of cooking any of the dishes. You will be introduced to a wonderful world of ingredients that many will likely be unaware of previously and if you do venture into the actual cooking bit, its remarkably approachable and fun, just be prepared for some funny looks when you walk into the kitchen with your hoover or the blowtorch from your shed.
This book is NOT for someone who can't cook! - Rated
If you have an inkling of an idea about how to cook and are hungry for someone to take you to a higher level, then you will enjoy this book.
Everyone already 'knows' how to make roast potatoes, or spag bol. Or do they? I am turning into a big fan of long slow cooking, and taking time over dishes. It never occured to me that as cold air is unable to be humid, the fridge makes a great place to dry things out (such as par-boiled potatoes). What a brilliantly simple and effective technique.
Heston's approach to cooking meat slowly goes against the British tendancy to value cuts of meat that remain tender when cooked quickly (but have little other merit - who wouldn't prefer properly cooked brisket over flash fried fillet?).
Having studied the cooking techniques, it led me to discover Texas pit barbecues, which are completely different from what we in the UK would call a barbecue (there is no direct application of heat, the food is gently cooked in the woodsmoke over many hours). Now, I'm cooking pieces of meat for many hours at 80C and getting far superior results. He makes valid points about the poor state of the British meat market and praises the American grading system. It is something we would do well to adopt, but it simply ain't gonna happen. So meat will forever be a mystery to some people, and we will have to continue to source a decent butcher.
The book is of course indulgent. After all, a lot of his recipes call for a lot of time and input, and you are unlikely to make these recipes every day.
The spagetti bolognese recipe is very interesting, and one wonders where on earth he got the idea for using Thai fish sauce. However, there is an historic precedent for this in that Thai fish sauce is not disimilar from ancient Roman fish sauces (known as garam, also a second cousin of Worcestershire Sauce). For an occasional treat, I don't think it can be bettered.
All in all, not so much a recipe book, more a research/training book for people who are already capable and don't mind spending 5 times as much on already familiar dishes as they might ordinarily do, but who appreciate that they are on a search for perfection, and time & money can occassionally be ignored.
|
