In Search of Total Perfection

by Heston Blumenthal

Heston Blumenthal has made his name creating such original dishes as Snail Porridge and Nitrogen Scrambled Egg & Bacon Ice Cream at his internationally acclaimed restaurant, The Fat Duck. In this book, a single-volume edition of the bestselling Perfection books, Heston focuses his creative talent on reinventing some of our most well-known (and most abused) dishes. He travels around the world in search of definitive versions of sixteen classic Roast Chicken & Roast Potatoes, Pizza, Hamburger,Bangers & Mash, Fish Pie, Steak, Spaghetti Bolognese, Risotto, Fish & Chips, Chilli Con Carne, Chicken Tikka Masala, Peking duck, Black Forest Gateau, Treacle Tart & Ice Cream, Trifle and Baked Alaska. Among the many adventures on his quest, he travels to Delhi and makes an MRI scan of the marinated chicken in his Tikki Masala; he discovers the secret to the ultimate crispy duck in Peking and experiments at home by inflating a Gressingham on a foot pump; he walks the Dickensian streets of Lambeth and learns how to capture the essence of a fish and chip shop in a perfume bottle, and he explores the Willy Wonka-esque Tate & Lyle factory and tastes some seventy-year-old syrup that proves an inspiration for the flavour of his treacle tart. Total Perfection is an original, inspiring and fascinating voyage around the culinary globe.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Heston Blumenthal is chef-patron of The Fat Duck in Bray, a three Michelin-starred restaurant known for its whimsical, scientific and creative style of cookery and famed for being named World’s Best Restaurant more than once.

At the age of 16, Heston travelled to France with his family for the first time and became fascinated with the world of food. He spent the next decade learning the basics of French cuisine from books and working as everything from a photocopier salesman to a debt collector to fund annual research trips to France. One of the books that most influenced him was On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, which questioned the fundamental rules of the kitchen and explored the science of cooking.

Heston opened The Fat Duck in 1995 with no financial backing. On the second day of opening the oven exploded, and Heston spent the rest of service with a bag of frozen peas on his head. Gradually, the restaurant eventually moved from serving simple French bistro food to the innovative, rule-breaking, multi-sensory tasting menu it serves today. Perhaps what is most extraordinary about the success of The Fat Duck is that Heston is entirely self-taught, save for three weeks spent in a few professional kitchens.

Reviews

[Nathalie Des Rosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this before working at the fat duck. Gave insight on how the test kitchen worked before arriving !

[Hildur · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fun for maybe the first half of the book but every chapter is basically the same and it starts getting tedious. Bulmenthal's ego also gets in the way sometimes and I kept finding myself shaking my fist at the book, mumbling "Get over yourself, Heston".

The stories and recipes themselves are quite interesting and I liked how he used common dishes as the basis for them all. Because of that people can take bits and pieces from Blumenthal's recipes and add them to their own traditional way of making them.

Students or people with jobs can't really do much from this book since the recipes take days to prepare. It's a shame because just reading about the dishes and not really having the time or money to make them yourself gets very tiring for the reader's taste buds.

For the reasons stated above this book was just... okay.
6/10

[Les Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really have to admire Heston determination in re-creating what he feels is the perfect dish. Whether it be Peking Duck, Pizza, a Hamburger, or Black Forest Cake.

He goes to incredible lengths to determine the best indgridients to use are and what the best methods of cooking that dish should be.

The only thing about this book that I had a hard time with was the recipie for the dish in question. I think I would have a very hard time recreating any of these dishes given the steps involved.

This was a great read and made me very hungry.

LB

[Jim]

This was actually two books in one which is why it took a long time to read. Fascinating though, lots of discussion about each recipe, the history and the people who make it special today, then about 50 steps with detailed instructions to get you through assembling a dish of perfection. Will be a shame to return to the library, but until the winter, i'm not going to have the time to do any of these anyway!

[Gregor Erbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

a foodie's search for perfectly prepared classic dishes