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Heston Blumenthal

Born	27 May 1966 (1966-05-27) (age 42) High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
Education	Self-taught
Current restaurant(s) The Fat Duck, The Hind's Head
Television show(s) In Search Of Perfection Big Chef Takes On Little Chef
Official Website

Heston Blumenthal OBE (born 27 May 1966 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire) is the chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the village of Bray in Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by the Good Food Guide 2007, and voted Best Restaurant in the World by fellow chefs in 2005. Since then he has been a perennial runner-up to Ferran Adrià of El Bulli in the world rankings. Blumenthal (pronounced /ˈbluːmənˌθɔːl/) is famous for his scientific approach and has been described as a culinary alchemist for his innovative style of cooking.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Cooking methods 3 Signature dishes 4 Collaborations 5 2009 food scare 6 References 7 External links

[edit] 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.

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, edited by Bloomsbury. His 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.

This was followed by two more 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 recreation 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 on Channel 4 covered his efforts to revamp the menu at a Little Chef motorway restaurant on the A303 at Popham^[1] in the hope that his recipe ideas would be introduced in all 193 outlets. ^[2] In March 2009, Blumenthal began a short series involving a Victorian, Medieval, Tudor and Roman themed dinner banquet inviting various celebrities as guests.

Blumenthal is a devotee of neuro-linguistic programming. ^[3]

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. ^[4]

In 2008, he released The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, which contains detailed descriptions of how to make many of his signature dishes, along with biographical notes, original artwork, and essays on many aspects of the science and pleasure of cooking.

[edit] Cooking methods

Blumenthal is a proponent of modern cooking; he opened his own research and development kitchen in early 2004.

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 low 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 survives the water bath.

[edit] Signature dishes

Blumenthal's trademark dishes include:^[5]

• Smoked bacon-and-egg ice cream
• Snail porridge
• Sound of the Sea
• Triple-cooked chips
• Beef royal
• Ice cream filled pork pie

[edit] Collaborations

Blumenthal has collaborated with scientists, including:

• Professor Peter Barham, Professorial Teaching Fellow in Physics at Bristol University and author of the book The Science of Cooking
• Dr Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford, with whom he collaborated in experiments with the use of headphones during eating
• Professor Andy Taylor at the University of Nottingham with whom Blumenthal has sponsored a PhD studentship
• Professors Don Mottram and Margot Gosney of the University of Reading, which in 2006 awarded Blumenthal an honorary degree.^[6]

[edit] 2009 food scare

On 28 February 2009, Blumenthal closed The Fat Duck after a number of customers claimed to be unwell after having dined there. ^[7] Later reports put the number of affected customers at over 400. ^[8] The restaurant was eventually given the all-clear by the Thames Valley Health Protection Agency to reopen on Thursday 12 March 2009, two weeks after it was closed. However environmental health officers had still not discovered the cause for the diners' symptoms.^[9]. On 20 March it was announced that the cause was probably an outbreak of the norovirus for which three staff and five customers have tested positive, an infection causing diarrhoea and vomiting, passed through contact and food and most likely to affect people with type O blood.^{[10][11] [12]}

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website of the Fat Duck restaurant
• Blumenthal's biography
• Heston Blumenthal's column in The Times
• The Hinds Head Hotel
• Heston Blumenthal recipes at www.bbc.co.uk
• An interview in the Observer newspaper, 2004
• Guardian newspaper article on Blumenthal's collaborations with academics
• Heston Blumenthal profile on CatererSearch (Named 3rd most influential chef in the UK in 2005)
• 'The Molecular Gastronomer to the Best Restaurant in the World' Rachel Edward-Stuart Freeview 'Snapshot' video by the Vega Science Trust.
• Heston Blumenthal's Desert Island Discs
• Appearance on Irish television Part 1 of The Panel on RTÉ
• San Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurants In The World awards