Book Review - The Fat Duck Cookbook

As I mentioned I've not been to well recently and so have ended up sitting far more than I would like. However that has meant I've had a chance to catch up on some "light" reading.

I think I mentioned back along I got a couple of books by Heston Blumenthal for Christmas, well the bigger one as in real big tome is the Fat Duck Cookbook which is basically the cookbook of his restaurant but much more than that really.

I have been fascinated by Heston since he started doing TV programs. The combination of showmanship, science, fantastic cooking and the idea of using all the senses is very appealing. I have loved watching his experiments even if they are obviously just the final set-up bit for the program. I'd love to be famous enough to be one of the guests on his shows ! I think a more sensible wish would be to have the cash to book a table at the Fat Duck and try the tasting menu. The website specifically states they will tailor the dishes for allergies if you ask when you book and  anyway many of the dishes are naturally safe for Celiacs.


So what is the book like? Well even if you get the budget version I got it is physically HUGE I can't read it on my lap without a big cushion to prop it up, really sitting at a table is more sensible. However once you have licked the whole actually being able to read it problem it is a hugely fascinating book. The first 130 or so pages are about how he got into cooking and how his restaurant and cooking style developed and evolved. It seems very much written from the heart and he is obviously a man with a huge passion for what he does. I really love the fact that he has managed so much on basically just being really, really curious. He is neither a trained chef or a scientist but has managed to span both and convince many very eminent people he is worth working with in both fields.  

He talks quite a lot about the many "truths" of cooking which just arn't really true or are true but for different reasons than we think and there were many things that had me noding and thinking yes of course while reading. Probably the biggest being the one he co-wrote a paper on which is that the middle bit of the tomato (the bit many chefs tell you to throw away) is the bit with most of the flavour. I never understood why I should be throwing that bit out as it was the bit I liked best and had the real tomato punch but it took someone like him to look at it analytically enough to work it out and go against traditional chef "wisdom". That isn't to say he throws out everything traditional far from it. He stresses time and time again that it is just as important as the science and newer things he does. 


I must admit he has me hankering after a kitchen that looks as much like a lab as anything but then it has never taken much for me to want to play with dry ice, liquid nitrogen and dehydrators !


Most of his recipes take days to do and have many many components but as he says in the run-up to the recipe section you don't have to do the whole thing, take a single sub-recipe and play with that, use it on it's own or with other things you already know how to do. Not all recipes need special equipment, though some obviously do, most do need a willingness to be organised and start preparing sometimes days in advance but if you are willing to do that they sound perfectly possible to do at home.


I can honestly say that Heston makes me as fascinated as my mum's copy of Escoffier did when I was a teen. That book opened up a whole new way of looking at food for me use as I was to good but traditional English cooking. Escoffier was full of dishes with sauces, a million ways to cook a chicken breast, ingredients I had never heard of and things which seemed posh and exotic to me then and made me think about other ways of cooking.

Heston opens up similar ideas and goes one step farther because Heston is all about Why.. And that is what I always want to know Why should I do this? Why does X taste good with Y but dreadful with Z? and so on.


I found out his first book was about cooking with kids and is now firmly on my to buy list as is the Fantastical feasts book as I'm determined to try lickable wallpaper for a party at some point!!


Finally the Fat Duck website is worth a look it has some fun elements to wander round and look at.