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
chocolate cocoa cream egg ice cream rosemary

chocolate and rosemary ice cream

chocolate and rosemary ice cream

Heston Blumenthal has recently created a range of ice creams for Waitrose, including chocolate and rosemary ice cream. I got the chance to try this, along with popcorn ice cream at Waitrose’s Summer party held at the V&A. I was mesmerised by the taste, deeply rich and chocolatey, but with a smooth herbal note. It’s reminiscent of choc-mint ice cream as it provides a similar mentholesque flavour, but remains distinctly rosemary-y.

At the event I also realised a big dream of mine – to meet Heston. OK, we didn’t swap phone numbers or make plans to go see Pirates 4. But I did manage to tell him what an inspiration he is to me and how much I enjoy his work. He seemed genuinely appreciative, not merely saying thanks and walking off but keen to express his gratitude.

Gushing aside, I had to try and recreate that ice cream flavour that I’d sampled. I was looking to marry that rich smoothness with a warm herb flavour. After some experimenting I’m confident that I’ve nailed it. It’s chocolatey, creamy and really interesting. It would be a good one to wheel out when friends are over for dinner as all the prep is well beforehand and you only need a little to satisfy. It’s really nice with crushed pistachios. A quick tip – this needs a good twenty minutes defrosting to get smooth and easily scooped, so remove it from the freezer just as you serve the main meal.

Be warned: bring your whisking arm with you.

You can probably make this with an ice cream maker but I’ve never owned one so I can’t help you there. A lot of people go for the ‘ break it up with a fork several times during freezing’ but it’s never made any noticeable improvement to me, so I don’t bother.

Chocolate and rosemary ice cream (makes about 600 ml in volume):

40g cocoa powder

1 large sprig of rosemary

500 ml whole milk

125g dark chocolate (about 70% cocoa solids)

¼ teaspoon vanilla salt

6 egg yolks

100g caster sugar + 6 tablespoons caster sugar

100ml double cream

  1. Put the milk into a saucepan and pop over a medium heat. Roll up the rosemary but leave it intact (this friction breaks the surface of the herb and causes it to leak more oil). Whisk the cocoa into the milk as it heats, and keep whisking until the milk just reaches the boil. Take off the heat.
  2. Melt the chocolate. You can use a bain marie for this if you like but personally I find it less faff to use a microwave on low power. Zap it for 2 minutes at a time until smooth.
  3. Whisk the egg yolks and 100g sugar together until a pale ivory colour and thick. Add the hot milk to the yolks gradually, whisking all the time. Return the mixture back to the saucepan and put back on a gentle heat. Keep on whisking and add the melted chocolate, and whisk for a further 5 minutes until thickened. Again turn off the heat and leave to one side while you make a caramel.
  4. Melt the 6 tablespoons sugar with 2 tablespoons water over a medium heat. Swirl the saucepan round to combine but do not stir. Keep it going until it turns a lovely amber colour, then add the double cream and keep on swirling. When the caramel is smooth add to the chocolate milk, again with the whisking. Pour through a sieve into a freezable container and freeze at least overnight before serving.
Categories
almonds amaretti cream meringue saffron strawberry sugar

heston blumenthal royal wedding trifle

As soon as I saw this article detailing the Heston Blumenthal Royal Wedding trifle made in celebration of the upcoming nuptials, I knew I had to give it a go.

Following the runaway success of Heston’s hidden orange pudding during Christmas 2010, Waitrose commissioned the Dinner proprietor to create a refreshing Summer dessert in celebration of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. I can’t say I care a great deal about the wedding but I do appreciate the general buzz of excitement among people I speak to – rays of sunshine in these politically gloomy times are welcome. One thing definitely guaranteed to grab my attention however is a new Heston recipe.

Heston seems to have a bit of a thing for trifles, as In Search Of Heston has previously noted. His In Search of Perfection version is particularly mental, with typically absurd amount of stages involved. It did come in handy for one section however – the strawberry compote, which here serves as the “jelly” layer of a Seventies trifle. I incorporated fresh strawbs in with the compote, as I know Heston is fond of mixing the cooked and raw version of an ingredient together. In place of custard there’s a particularly intriguing saffron cream, topped with fragrant, crisp amaretti biscuits. The supermarket version is laced with Marc de Champagne brandy – well I checked my cupboard and I was fresh out (!) so I plumped for my old favourite dessert spirit, Marsala. Finally there’s a meringue topping, and a garnish of candied almonds and dried strawberries.

There’s a few stages involved to be sure but none of them are particularly taxing and involve a bit of letting the ingredients sit about. I have no idea how close my version has come, as it isn’t in the shops yet at the time of writing, but I was very pleased with it. It’s creamy, fruity and the saffron sends in a festive, spiced note out of left-field, yet it’s somehow warming and comforting.

I’ll be fascinated to try the real thing when it’s around to see how I did but either way, I think it’s a lovely dessert with a lot going for it.

Heston Blumenthal’s Royal Wedding Trifle (serves 6 – 8):

For the strawberry compote:

1kg strawberries, hulled and diced

100g caster sugar

  1. Place the strawberries and sugar (reserving 4 for later) in a saucepan and gently heat, stirring occasionally. Cook down for about 15 minutes until you have a sticky puree.
  2. Pass the puree through a sieve to remove all the bits and crush well with the back of a spoon to get the most out of it.

For the saffron cream:

500ml double cream

About 20 threads of saffron

8 tablespoons caster sugar

  1. Pop the cream in a saucepan and add the saffron. Bring to a gentle simmer then turn off the heat and allow to cool. The saffron will infuse and colour the cream, turning custard-yellow.
  2. When the cream has cooled whisk, gradually adding the sugar. Keep going until you have a stiff cream.

For the amaretti:

150g crushed amaretti biscuits

4 tablespoons Marsala wine

  1. Mix the amaretti with the Marsala but don’t let it sit around too long – you still want them to have some crunch.

For the meringues:

5 egg whites

300g caster sugar

1 teaspoon cornflour

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 150°C. Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually incorporate the sugar. Once all that’s in add the cornflour and vinegar. Keep whisking until the mixture is stiff.
  2. Pour into a piping bag and pipe 5cm blobs onto a lined baking tray, then bake for 1½ hours until firm but not browned. Turn off the oven and leave to cool in the oven for a further oven, then peel off and store in airtight containers until needed.

To garnish:

30g almonds

2 tablespoons caster sugar

2 large strawberries, finely sliced

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 100°C. Dust a baking tray with icing sugar and lay the strawberries out on the sugar. Pop in the oven for about half an hour, until the strawberries are slightly shrivelled and sticky. When cooled peel off the tray gently.
  2. Put a small pan over a high heat and add the almonds. Shake them around for a couple of minute until toasted all over.
  3. Add the sugar, a pinch of salt and a tiny splash of water. Keep tossing the mix around in the pan until the sugar starts to turn golden brown, then turn out onto a ceramic plate to cool.

To assemble:

  1. Place the strawberry compote in the bottom of a serving dish (a nice glass one would be traditional, try and use a prettier one than mine). Finely slice the last 2 strawberries, top with a small twist of black pepper and stir into the puree.
  2. Spoon the cream over the strawberries. Top this with the amaretti biscuits.
  3. Arrange the meringues on the top, and scatter over the almonds and dried strawberry slices. Serve with bunting.
Want to know more about Heston and his recipes? Check out my Heston ingredient infographic.
Categories
mustard onion rosemary stock worcestershire sauce

perfect onion gravy

I was asked to devise the ‘perfect onion gravy recipe’ and that’s a challenge I don’t take lightly.

So what should it be? For me rich and nourishing, with sweet and complex flavours. The onions are obviously key, but the stock makes a massive impact. Above all the gravy should positively drip umami. Lots of full, rounded savouriness.

I used a couple of resources to nail the perfect solution. I had to look at how the star of the dish, the onion, was treated. First, which onions? You can get good gravy out of red onions but not for the longish cooking time that I was after. No, it has to be the medium British brown onion. Perfectly round with appealing ivory skin, with a balanced sweet/sharp flavour, it has to be British onions, supporting British farmers. As for the cooking, I stumbled over this fascinating article at Serious Eats which really picked apart caramelizing onions. I gave it a try and I definitely had to incorporate elements of it in the final dish. It allows for delicious, sweet onions with perfect colouring.

I looked to my old pal Heston Blumenthal and his chicken gravy technique, involving roasting off a chicken carcass, separately frying off mushrooms and onions and combining in a pressure cooker with white wine. Personally I wanted a beefier, herbier background so that gave me ideas to use beef bones in the stock. This provides the structure of the dish. Chat up your butcher for some beef bones – if you can’t I find may supermarkets with an instore butcher will sell them for a nominal fee, 20p or so. You don’t need to make the stock yourself necessarily (it’s a bit of a time-hog) but if you have the time it’s amazing.

There’s also an alcoholic backnote I wanted to include: red wine is fairly typical, as is a stout, or my old chum marsala. But I recalled a great onion soup recipe from Giorgio Locatelli where cider was included And it’s perfect because it’s tangy and boozy with fruity hints. It’s the final element that crowns the gravy.

It’s rich, it’s sweet, it’s irresistible. I served mine with a steak and it sure didn’t last long.

Perfect onion gravy (makes about 1 ½ pints):

For the stock:

4 or 5 beef bones

Tablespoon of tomato puree

4 or 5 chestnut mushrooms

1 stick of celery, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

3 onions, halved

Sprig each of thyme and rosemary

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C. Put the veg in a heavy baking tray and lay the bones on top. Smear the bones all over with tomato puree, then tuck the herbs round and about. Roast the lot in the oven for 30 minutes to give a rich intensity to the stock.
  2. Transfer the lot to a deep pot and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours with a loose fitting lid. Remove the lid and boil hard for half an hour to reduce it down. Transfer to a large bowl or jug and chill until needed.

For the gravy:

1 teaspoon sugar

3 British onions, halved and sliced into half-moons (I recommend using a food processor with medium slicing attachment for uniformity)

1 tablespoon butter

1 star anise

¼ teaspoon baking powder (rarely for me, I advise you to be careful with this measurement as if you overdo this it will be bitter and chemical-tasting)

1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped

300ml Aspall’s organic cider

1 teaspoon English mustard

1 tablespoon flour

Beef stock as above (or 1 ½ pints of your favourite organic beef stock)

  1. In a wide frying pan heat the sugar over a gentle heat until it turns to liquid, and quickly before it burns add the onions, baking powder and butter. Turn the heat up to medium and stir well to coat the onions in sugar and butter. After a minute add the star anise and rosemary. Cook for a further 8 minutes or so until the onions start to turn a lovely shade of brown. Keep stirring to ensure they don’t burn.
  2. Start to deglaze the sticky stuff from the pan with the cider a splash at a time. Don’t add too much as it will reduce the heat in the pan each time. Once the liquid goes add the next splash until it’s all gone. The onions will now be glazed with a gorgeous appley shine.
  3. Add the mustard and flour and stir well to incorporate for a minute. Once all the white bits of flour have gone add the stock and bring to a simmer. Cook for at least another 5 minutes and then reduce until it is the desired consistency, then check the seasoning. Salt and pepper here are crucial, and perhaps a splash of red wine vinegar to balance the tartness. Remove the star anise before serving.
Categories
orange

heston blumenthal’s hidden orange christmas pudding

In my rush to eat this legendary item, I took the worst picture possible. Sorry about that.

The run-up to Christmas 2010 will be remembered for one thing: the craze to eat Heston’s hidden orange pud. The ads appeared on TV, and suddenly stocks were low. Then Waitrose ran out completely, and demand reached fever-pitch. Reports came in that they were selling for over £1,000 and they were the must-have Christmas dinner dessert. How strange.

I knew I had no chance of getting one but entertained thoughts of making my own. Every newspaper seemed to jump at the chance, and Mat Follas had a really good go. But while I was formulating my recipe, I was sent by Waitrose direct.

So what did my family think of it come Christmas day, post Queen’s speech? The consensus was: light, marmaladey, with a moist texture. The candied orange itself is beautiful, sending jammy juice through the pudding. I tasted a lot of hazelnuts myself, and fairly bready. Personally I can take or leave Christmas pudding, so this made a delicious alternative.

Though this does present Waitrose with a dilemma. Do they put this back on the shelf in December 2011? If they do they won’t get the same fervour, and customers getting comfortable with it being available every year. Or do they consign it to the archives as an exclusive and do something completely different? Time will tell…

Exit mobile version