Tag: heston blumenthal

Heston Blumenthal is not a classically trained chef. Having spent many years touring France and staging in kitchens as he went along, every night Heston would go home and try and recreate dishes as perfectly as he could. After taking a punt in opening a restaurant in Bray, it very quickly became a must-see destination, followed by three Michelin stars, and was at one point the best restaurant in the world. Heston has become known for his ‘wacky’ approach, but it’s one that is desperate to make the most of every ingredient he turns his attention to.

Categories
food restaurant review

my favourite things from 2023

Join me as I look back over they year with some of my (and your!) favourite projects at BigSpud HQ from 2023.

Sea bass at the Blacksmiths, Isle of Wight

The sea bass dish as they serve it at the Blacksmiths pub

The best meal I had all year was at a pub overlooking the north coast of the Isle of Wight. The Blacksmiths is an absolute treat, with me wanting to try every dish. The sea bass was a delight, crisp and fresh, with a sweet and savoury bread salad. I cannot tell you from an ingredients list alone how delicious it was. It was perfect. I only regret that I don’t live closer so I can go there for dinner every day.

Marco Pierre White’s fondant potatoes

Marco Pierre White has defined the second half of the year for me; I’ve read loads of his books, watched his programmes, made his recipes. Understanding what makes this titan of restaurants tick has been fascinating. I’ve dug into his personality and uncovered the simplicity that lies at the core of his cooking, and fastidious attention to detail to replicate recipes repeatedly. This fondant potato recipe was a real insight into how he works.

Steak ‘n’ Snails

Continuing the Marco Pierre White theme, I made the recipe that he made as tribute to old friend Anthony Bourdain. It’s a very umami affair, with fast-cooked steak, meaty mushrooms and plump garlicky mushrooms. I made this on a rainy November evening and it was just the thing to pep me up – it’s the parsley that makes it, “washing the palate” as Marco says.

Biography of Keith Floyd

It’s fair to say this video biography of Keith Floyd I made didn’t quite land as well as I’d hoped – I’d put a lot of work into it, reading two of his autobiographies and watching every programme of his I could find. It’s a fascinating story of boom and bust and just going for it at every turn – it’s only nine minutes so give it a watch if you’ve any interest in how TV cookery has changed over the years.

Chicken, sweetcorn and chorizo pizza

After a trip to Gordon Ramsay’s Street Pizza Kitchen I became obsessed with the combo of chicken, sweetcorn, and chorizo. It’s an absolute winner.

Chicken, sweetcorn and chorizo pizza

Recreating Heston’s meat fruit

I’ve been meaning to make this for the longest time. I finally got around to it… and it was quite the disaster! I got the gelatine ratio wrong and overworked it, leading to a mis-shapen sloppy mess. Watch the video to see how it turned out.

Heston’s meat fruit

Most popular with you

Meanwhile, what were the top posts from 2023 that kept you coming back this year?

Beef dripping sauce – After a trip to steak restaurant Miller & Carter I had to have a go at recreating their signature sauce. After a few goes I’m really pleased with this rich, indulgent gravy.

Onion loaf – and hot on the heels of beef dripping I also made the crispy, savoury side dish.

Brined leg of lamb – this proved very popular as most people associate brining with white meats. But a salty bath for lamb brings out the deep savouriness that matches it perfectly.

Philly cheese stack – I don’t mind McDonald’s, but I’ve definitely grown bored of their predictable menu. But in Autumn they came out with a burger laced with cheese sauce and fried onions. I recreated it and it’s absolutely bang on.

Cornershop curry – this Jamie Oliver recipe is warming, tasty, and can be made very easily with stuff you have in the cupboard. A great mideweek-er.

Thanks for coming along for the ride in 2023. I look forward to sharing more food adventures with you in 2024!

Categories
almonds food orange

making heston blumenthal’s hidden orange christmas pudding

As part of a collaboration with BakeAcrossEurope we decided to have a go at Christmas puddings. She’s gone down the traditional route, making an Eliza Acton recipe, and I… didn’t.

In 2010 Heston Blumenthal released the ‘hidden orange Christmas pudding’ in conjunction with Waitrose. I wrote about it at the time and it’s bizarre to look back on it now. They sold out, they were on eBay for hundreds of pounds, and now if you look around all the supermarkets they all have versions of this pudding.

Where did the idea come from? Well most of us know the gimmick of having a sixpence coin buried in the batter, with the recipient being lucky, so that’s the idea of a hidden treat. We often have oranges around the house at this time of year, as well as the idea of having an orange in your stocking (which seems mean now, but was very typical in the post-war years right up to the 1980s). I also think Heston might have had the Sussex Pond Pudding in mind, an historical recipe he loves to reference, where a lemon custard flows from the dessert when cut into. So there’s many ideas coming together.

Heston tried to recapture this magic many times but it never quite resonated the same again. Earlier in 2023 Heston and Waitrose parted ways and it looks like this year Waitrose are offering a ‘Sicilian Orange & Whisky pudding‘.

Because it was a commercial product an official recipe was never released. So I’ve looked at other attempts people made, looked at the ingredient listing from an archive product, watched the factory videos… and I think I’ve made a good stab at it.

If I had a niggle, I’d candy the orange for longer. The commercial version candies it for 7 weeks! Mine was just an hour. I think a few hours so it starts to shrivel and break down would make it more delicious.

But otherwise I’m really pleased with it. It’s lighter than a traditional pudding like Heston’s was, but still rich and fruity.

Have you made Heston’s hidden orange Christmas pudding? Let me know in the comments!

Print

hidden orange christmas pudding

Course Dessert
Cuisine English
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 7 hours
Total Time 8 hours

Equipment

  • 1 pudding basin
  • pan big enough to comfortably hold the pudding basin, plus lid

Ingredients

For the candied orange:

  • 1 large orange
  • 250 g sugar
  • 10 g liquid glucose
  • 200 g marmalade

For the pudding:

  • 125 g suet beef or vegetable
  • 125 g breadcrumbs
  • 250 g brown sugar
  • 75 g self-raising flour
  • ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon mixed spice any combination of sweet baking spices will do
  • 500 g mixed dried fruit such as currants, cherries, raisins, cranberries
  • 25 g mixed nuts
  • 50 g mixed citrus peel
  • 50 g glace cherries
  • 150 ml cider preferably orange flavoured, but any will do
  • 4 tablespoons Cointreau any booze will do but the orange liqueur seems appropriate
  • 2 eggs

Instructions

For the candied orange:

  • Prick the orange all over with a toothpick. Combine the ingredients in a pan with the orange and cover with water. Stir really well to combine. Cover and simmer gently for an hour. Turn off the heat and leave to sit, covered, for a further hour. Then reheat and simmer for yet another hour to really break the orange down. Remove the orange and set aside to cool.

For the pudding:

  • In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients, stirring well. Then add all the wet ingredients, fruits and nuts and stir very well. You want something that will drop off the spoon slowly. Add a touch more flour or cider if needed.
  • Grease a 1 litre pudding basin well. Add about a third of the pudding mix, then nestle your orange in. Pack the rest of your pudding mix around the orange and press down with the spatula. Gently tap your basin to remove air pockets.
  • Add a layer of baking paper, then cover with foil. Tie around the neck with string. Put a plate at the bottom of a pan large enough to fit your basin, pop your pudding in and bring boiling water up along the sides and cover. Simmer for 7 hours, topping up with more water as required. Allow to cool. You can eat straight away, or microwave for a couple of minutes before serving.

Video

Notes

Serve with custard, ice cream, brandy sauce, or brandy butter. Scales up really well and difficult to get wrong.
Categories
food porridge snails

heston blumenthal’s snail porridge

Ask people to name a dish by Heston Blumenthal and you’ll hear things like egg and bacon ice cream, Sound of the Sea, …and probably snail porridge.

If you want to see a video of me making this, I filmed a livestream of it. Click to watch!

One of Heston’s chefs went on honeymoon and had ‘fish porridge’ in New York. This odd combination sent Heston’s mind reeling. He was working on a snail cannelloni recipe for the Fat Duck and realised that if he could combine snails with tasty ingredients like ham, mushrooms and butter he could make the dish more palatable. There is a long history of eating snails in England – Mendips wallfish is an absolute delicacy – but snails have a real issue with PR. Really are they any different to cockles or mussels, which sure have their detractors but look pretty similar?

With a little tailoring Heston made this dish a Fat Duck speciality and is now one of his most famous dishes. It’s taken me far too long to attempt it. There’s two recipes, the deluxe restaurant version from the Fat Duck cookbook and a more homely version here. I was aiming for the latter.

The hardest part was obtaining snails without paying a fortune. It’s possible to do it yourself and purge at home (such as my mate Danny did) but I just know I’d do it wrong. It seems very difficult to buy just a few. If you want 24 400g cans, no problem. Eventually I got some from Ocado and just enough to make this.

There’s three components: a stock, a butter, and the assembled porridge dish. As often the case with Heston home recipes they’re not difficult but they take a little while. And really… I’m not sure it’s worth it. The porridge is excellent, packed with flavour and full of savouriness. And the butter! It’s absolutely delicious and worth making to have in the freezer. Topped with the zingy fennel salad it’s a powerful combo. But the snails are just kind of there. Not horrible, not amazing, a little slightly-chewy things. But yeah, savoury porridge.

So give it a go, but you don’t really need snails.

Print

snail porridge

Course Main Course
Cuisine English
Keyword escargot
Servings 1 person

Ingredients

For the stock:

  • 150 g chicken wings
  • 6 snails
  • 1/2 onion peeled and thinly sliced
  • 1/2 fennel bulb finely sliced
  • 1 stick celery finely sliced
  • 50 g button mushrooms finely sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • Bouquet garni of bay thyme and rosemary

For the butter:

  • 12 g whole garlic cloves peeled
  • 50 g button mushrooms
  • ½ onion
  • 100 g unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 10 g Dijon mustard
  • 2 g salt
  • 50 g flat-leaf parsley chopped
  • 20 g Parma ham
  • 6 cooked snails
  • 1 slice Parma ham
  • fennel slices

For the porridge:

  • 10 g porridge oats
  • sherry vinegar
  • walnut oil

Instructions

For the stock:

  • Put a pan of cold water with the chicken wings over a medium heat. Bring to the boil and add the rest of the stock ingredients. Simmer very gently for an hour. Remove from the heat, leave to cool a little. Strain off the stock, reserving the liquor and the snails.

For the butter:

  • Finely chop the mushrooms, onion and garlic. Heat half the butter in a frying pan and sweat for five minutes, until softened. Tip into a food processor, along with the remaining ingredients, then purée until smooth.
  • Tip on to a sheet of clingfilm and roll into a cylinder. Store in the fridge or freezer until required.

To serve:

  • Heat the stock in a pan over a high heat and once simmering, add the oats. Stir until all the liquid has been absorbed (this will only take a couple of minutes). Remove from the heat and beat in the snail butter and the snails. Season generously.
  • Finely shred the ham. Slice the fennel as thinly as possible. Spoon the porridge on to plates and top with ham. Toss the fennel with vinegar and walnut oil to taste, season, place on porridge and serve.

Video

Categories
egg

heston blumenthal’s sous vide scrambled eggs

Recently I ranked all of Heston Blumenthal’s books, and in that I named Heston Blumenthal at Home my favourite Heston book. To celebrate let’s show you a recipe that really typifies his approach: Heston Blumenthal’s sous vide scrambled eggs.

The humble scrambled egg, that anyone can do, often one of the first things people learn to cook. Some people add milk, some people microwave, though if you just go to it in a pan over a low heat you get delicious fluffy eggs packed with flavour.

Heston favours the sous vide method. By vacuum packing the eggs into a bag and leaving in a 75°C water bath. With the occasional massage of the bag the eggs cook slowly but come up to temperature perfectly and they come out magical.

As usual the genius Blumenthal touch isn’t the method – though that is great – but the addition of brown butter at the end is what makes it. The clarified butter taken to the nutty stage adds a layer of flavour that is great with the eggs, simultaneously sweet yet savoury.

This kind of recipe is very representative of Heston – scrambled eggs is dish everyone knows but the addition of a little science and careful thought it is elevated above the norm. Give it a try!

Print

heston blumenthal's sous vide scrambled eggs

A simple recipe elevated with techniques
Course Brunch
Cuisine British
Keyword eggs
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings 1 person

Ingredients

  • 3 eggs
  • 10 ml butter melted
  • 10 ml double cream
  • 10 ml whole milk

For the brown butter

  • 10 g butter

Instructions

To make the brown butter:

  • Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat. Once the sizzling subsides pay close attention to the pan. Look for it to turn dark brown and smell like hazelnuts. Immediately strain through a coffee filter paper or muslin into a bowl or cup and reserve for later.

For the eggs:

  • Set the sous vide setup to 75°C.
  • Whisk the egg, melted butter, milk and cream together along with a pinch of salt until well combined. Vacuum seal the eggs in a bag.
  • Submerge the eggs in the water bath for 15 minutes. Every 4-5 minutes remove the bag and massage to mix (be careful of the temperature, use a towel or gloves).
  • Serve with your favourite toast (I like a bagel!) and optionally garnish with chives. Add a spritz of the melted butter and eat immediately.

Video

Exit mobile version