I love books, and especially books that are well made. And interesting. And good looking. I have mentioned Heston Blumenthal's book The Big Fat Duck Cookbook (in this post). That is a gorgeous book, full of interesting information, art, recipes and stunning food images. When we had lunch at The Fat Duck (see this post) I bought another book of his: Historic Heston Blumenthal. And it is actually signed by the man himself as well!Heston has for a number of years been interested in old recipes from England. We are talking about recipes dating back from the 14th century and up until the 19th. He has collected and studied these, but it would not be Heston if he didn't also interpret them in his own way. All this ended up with his restaurant in London called Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. I have a table reservation there in a couple of weeks, so there will be a blog posts coming your way after that. But in addition to the restaurant he has also made a new book, and it is absolutely stunning.
First of all it is huge, the same size as the Fat Duck one, and they do make a bit of the same impression, but I think Historic is even more visually stunning than the Duck. There seems to be more artwork, both new and old, and the food images are just as great as in the previous book.
The volume starts out with a chapter entitled "To the Reader" where Heston outlines his quest for old recipes.
Then there are the recipes them selves. Each chapter is one recipe, and each recipe starts out with some old artwork to put you in the mood and by quoting the original as found in some old book or other source.
Following that there are anything from 4 to 8 pages of rather interesting text describing Heston's work with this dish and how it transformed into the modern version.
For instance the innocent sounding Nettle Porridge has the following sub-recipes:
- Parsley and Nettle Puree
- Garlic Puree
- Shallots
- Mushrooms
- Parsley and Nettle Butter (using all of the above)
- Garlic Butter
- Walnut Vinaigrette Base
- Garlic-Walnut Vinaigrette (using the Garlic Butter and the Vinaigrette Base)
- Smoked Olive Oil
- Pickled Smoked Golden Beetroot (using Smoked Olive Oil)
- Pickled Ruby Beetroot
- Finished Pickled Golden and Ruby Beetroot (using the two above plus Vegetable Braising Liquid from another recipe)
- 5% Garlic Herb Brine
- Brined Frogs Legs (using the brine)
- Cooked Frogs Legs (using the above)
- Cooked Cods Palate (using Garlic Butter from above)
And finally
- To serve (Using all of the above plus 4-5 other ingredients).
All this is spread out over three pages. And following that is a piece of food porn showing the finished dish.
As in most recipes of this caliber, measures are in grams. You do not use 2 dl of water, but rather 200 grams. or 210 grams. This is because measuring devices for liquids often are less than accurate, and these recipes are all about accuracy. You do not use one egg, but 47 grams of egg. And you will also need scales capable of measuring at least 0.1 grams accurately. This is because some of the modernist ingredients such as Gellan or Xanthan is used in very small quantities and a difference of a few tenths of a gram makes all the difference.
So, is it possible to cook anything from the book? Well, yes, I believe so, even though if you are a food nerd, just reading the book is an experience in itself. It may help to have done a few modernist dishes before and to know a little bit about the techniques involved. For some great sources for that, see for instance
One major hurdle may be getting the ingredients. These difficult ingredients fall into two categories. Recipes often refers to for instance specific types of vinegars or oils that may be easy to get in for instance England, but not in your little, obscure country, for instance Norway (in my case). In addition to that, there are specific modernist ingredients (or at least they are considered modernist now, but they may become mainstream soon) like Gellan and Xanthan. I have found that this latter group is becoming more and more easy to find in speciality shops (in Norway, try http://sousvidenorge.no/) or you can order them on-line at for instance
These ship world wide.
In the coming months I will be trying to cook some of the recipes in the book. Some of the recipes are smaller and easier than others, so I will be starting with some of them. Hopefully I will be able to make at least a small number of them. And I will also report on my visit to the Dinner restaurant. Keep an eye out for the blogposts!
No comments:
Post a Comment