Heston Blumenthal – Out of the Kitchen

I’m pretty excited, I’ve managed to secure a VIP ticket to the Heston Blumenthal – Out of the Kitchen live show at the State Theatre (15th March).  Showing my ticket as I walk in to the theatre lobby there is a fantastic buzz.  Not only are there lots of foodies, bloggers, but also many people from the industry (chefs especially).  I even see San Sebastian’s  Elena Arzak (she’s just run Masterclasses at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival) in animated discussion in the lobby.

In the lobby Heston’s team are asking people to fill out cards giving examples of  foods that evoke childhood memories for them.  He will use these nostalgic examples later on.

After being shown to my seat, I take out my camera out for some initial snaps.  I’m politely reminded by the usher “no photos in the Theatre”.  Sorry about the absence of photos here.

Waiting for Heston to arrive on stage, we’re watching clips from his new TV series, Heston’s Mission Impossible (which will be screening on Channel Seven in April).  It shows Heston re-designing food menus for an airline, a cinema, a children’s hospital and on a submarine.

Matt Preston, in a bright coloured suit, comes onto stage and introduces Heston.  As the “airline food” clip is running Heston talks us through the episode.  Of course we’ve all tried airline food, it’s terrible reheated, you wouldn’t pay £2.50 for it from a shop, but we’re happy to accept it on a plane.  He sets about re-designing the food offering with a fresh, perception challenging (eg. think orange, beetroot jelly with the colours switched to what you’d expect) bento box that requires some nasal douching (cleansing) before consumption.  Headphones on and Heston talks them through the contents of the box.  Does it work?  Well, the preparation in the cramped gallery area doesn’t go well and the food is served very late, but yes it gets a thumbs up from the air travellers.  Will we see it on flights in the future?  The airline executives thought some of Heston’s ideas had merit, so you never know.

No surprises when Heston espouses that eating is a multi-sensory experience.  He recounts his own experience of drinking muscadelle while journeying down a river in Europe, loving the wine and buying case to take back home.  When he opens the wine back home it isn’t as exceptional as he remembered.  Why?  Some might say that wine doesn’t travel well, but Heston believes that while he brought the wine back, he didn’t bring everything else back that made the experience.

It was a trip to a Michelin-starred restaurant in Provence in his youth that first ignited Heston’s passion for gastronomy.  A self taught chef, his first paid job as a chef was actually when he opened the Fat Duck in the English village of Bray in 1995.  Prior to that he’d worked as a credit controller, repo man.  He’d failed his “O” levels in Chemistry, but did get an A for Art.  In the early years the Fat Duck flirted with bankruptcy but gradually grew in reputation adding on Michelin stars until it was finally named best restaurant in the world in 2005.

It was back in 1997 when Heston developed his crab risotto and crab ice cream (which could have been more simply labelled crab bisque or a cold soup) that he started to get his insights into the world of perception.  In 2003 he did some work with an experimental psychologist around the role sound plays in eating.  They fed potato crisps to people with head phones on.  The heads phones either magnified or muffled the sounds of a person eating crisps.  The louder the crunch the crisper and fresher the potato crisp, muffled and the consumer thought they were stale.  Similarly, they conducted research while people were eating oysters.  Again music was piped into head phones while people ate – either sounds of the seas or the barnyard.  Ninety percent of people rated their eating experience more pleasurable and twenty percent thought there was more saltiness in the oysters when they listened to music of the sea.

This research led to the creation of one of the Fat Duck’s best known dishes the Sound of the Sea where various ingredients are crafted together to plate up a coastal scene and customers are given an iPod (in a seashell) to listen to the sounds of the ocean while they eat.  After talking us through the inspiration and creation of this dish (with supporting video) Heston proceeds to do the same with other signature dishes including his Mock Turtle Soup (inspired from the Mad Hatter’s pocket watch in Alice in Wonderland) as well as the Flaming Sorbet (with its apparent defying of the laws of physics).  He also presents some new recipes he’s developed including his Queen of Hearts, a new white chocolate, ultra thin short bread jam tart in the form of a playing card that he’s including in the petit fours given out at the end of a Fat Duck meal.

Heston asks the audience if they know the difference between taste and flavour ?

Taste is from the receptors on our tongue – it’s about sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami.  Flavour is where taste but also aroma (molecules) comes into play.  That’s why food just doesn’t seem the same when you have a cold or 10,000 metres up in the air in a pressurised aircraft cabin.

A follow up question – is it nature or nurture ?

Taste is hardwired.  We like sweet things, they typically give us energy.  Bitter tastes are associated with “poisons”, we don’t like them and quickly spit them out (we have more bitter receptors on our tongues).

Flavour is more learned and differs by culture.  Heston cites the example of the rotten fish dish, Surströmming, that is a delicacy in Sweden, but induces “gagging” for most others.

To elaborate Heston invites four people from the audience up on stage.  Firstly they take a bite from an olive while pinching their nose closed, then release to take another bite.  Yes, very different.  Next he sprays an atomiser with vanilla essence, everyone comments on the sweet fragrance.  Then he gets them to try biting into a vanilla bean pod.  It’s bitter.  What he’s demonstrated is “learned association”.  As we associate vanilla with sweet preparations, we automatically think it will be sweet.

Just before the interval they pull a surprise and bring Jack (the Junior Masterchef runner up and laid back as ever) on stage to meet Heston.  The background clips show Jack cooking his take on Heston’s snail porridge during the competition last year.  There’s some chatting and a quick photo opportunity with Heston.

Post interval we’re each handed a envelope and told not to open until requested by Heston.

The Fat Duck has seating for 42 people and takes about 30,000 reservation calls a day.  With people eager to get a table and many having a long wait Heston wanted to start the diner’s experience from the point they got a confirmed booking.  Firmly believing that anticipation and excitement make food better Heston developed his “kid in a sweet shop” concept to whet the appetite (it launches in 2 months time).  Diners will be sent a website link that allows them to start up a colourful animation that leads them on journey through the Fat Duck menu.  It’s part Alice in Wonderland, part Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with a mix of Fat Duck icons and imagery, with Gene Wilder signing the song Pure Imagination in the background – very cool.  The animation is narrated by the distinctive John Hurt and it is towards the end of the viewing, when the Theatre darkens, that we’re that we’re asked to open that envelope.  It contains a card with the smells of a sweet shop that rounds out the sensory experience.

This leads into the discussion about “nostalgia foods” with Heston offering up his own example where his son was watching the 60′s Pink Panther TV show which triggered memories for Heston of the synthetically flavoured chocolate bar that he hadn’t tasted in 30 years.  Someone else’s food memory takes them back to a youthful time at the local swimming baths.

The penultimate session of the evening arrives.  The Q&A section – both from Mr Preston and the audience.  Here are some snippets to finish off:

Q:  Words to describe himself ?

A:  Inquisitive, relentless, energetic.

Q:  Words that his wife would use to describe him ?

A:  Annoying, relentless, charming (laughs).

Q:  What does he fear ?

A:  Failure.

Q:  Is fear in the kitchen a good thing (in reference to how some chefs run a kitchen) ?

A:  No not good.  In the past Heston did scream and shout, but he came to realise that it was about his own shortcomings.  Either the person who he’d picked for the job was not right, he’d not trained them correctly or he’d expected to much.  Also when people are stressed their perceptions of sweet and salt can be reduced by up to 50% (eg. a chef may over salt a dish).

Q:  Worst cooking disaster ?

A:  A situation in the first days at the Fat Duck: Heston had turned on the gas in the oven but was distracted by a call to the front of the restaurant.  When he returned, he ignited the gas, there was an explosion and he was thrown backwards to land on the top of a cabinet across the room with burnt skin and hair on fire.  Probably quite amusing to see him later on, frozen bags of peas on his head, directing a friend through the cooking of each dish.

Q:  Is there any food you wouldn’t eat ?

A:  No, there’s not really any food he wouldn’t try.  Perhaps a question of whether you would really want to some situations.  For example, there is an Asian delicacy involving live baby eels dropped into sake which you then drink – you feel them wriggling as they slide down your throat.  On one trip to Sardinia, he did eat mice (they’d been reared on nuts and seeds). Tasted a bit like quail he thought.

.. and so an insightful and entertaining evening with a modern culinary master draws to close.  Definitely value for money.  Heston says his goodbyes and exits the stage (to be sighted later that night sampling the fare at Chinatown’s Golden Century).