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.

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burger curry food noodles pizza

recent rumblings: a round up

It’s been a while since I rolled up the latest stuff I’ve been up to, so here goes!

Weird Ingredients

I couldn’t resist rounding up 12 weird things Heston has cooked with and listed them over at Buzzfeed here. Includes Devil’s Penis. Go check it out!

Five Guys UK

five guys UK bacon cheeeseburger all the way

Oh lordy. This was a burger. Five Guys invited me to their first UK restaurant outside of London, based in Essex Mecca Lakeside. Their menu is purposefully simple, offering not a lot beyond burger, hot dog and fries, but by simplifying things they can really focus on what they’re doing.

I opted for a bacon cheeseburger ‘all the way’ which is as you can see a burger with lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms and a bunch of sauces I can’t remember. And it was good. It smelled of grilled beef and tasted juicy and satisfying, packed with meaty goodness. By the way, you don’t ask for a double patty; it just comes like that. Also when you ask for a portion of fries it serves two. They like to make sure you get fed. The burger costs £8.25 but we compared it to a recent Frankie and Benny’s burger which costs c. £11 with fries and was decidedly frozen, limp and tasteless. This was night and day. You watch the guy grab a ball of meat over the counter, squish it then grill it.

Mrs. Spud and I were also really taken with the drinks machine, which boasts over 100 drinks from a single vending machine. I giggled like a child using it.

Chatting with the manager they’re looking to introduce milkshakes to the UK soon, which for me would set it off perfectly. If you like a burger, go find a Five Guys near you and try one.

Chinatown Walking Tour with Meemalee

I’m a noodle numpty so was keen to have an expert show me round Chinatown. Step forward noodle cookbook author MiMi Aye. It was a lot of fun! Read more about it here.

Kavey Meets the Bloggers

Speaking of other awesome bloggers, for some reason Kavey interviewed me about my blog. Find out a bit more about me here.

Peafs

I want to give a shout out to my local farm shop, Peafs. It’s exactly what I want; a knowledegable butcher (who told me he was out of ham because it needs another week to cure yet), great pies, fresh local veg and preserves by the bucket. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before, but I love it. It’s handy located next door to my daughter’s ballet class so I have a weekly excuse to browse there.

If you’re in the mid-Essex area, check out Peafs on Hullbridge Road, Rayleigh.

Curriza

I was asked to try some curry pizzas the other day – Currizzas, if you will. Combining two takeaway favourites, pizza and curry, what could go wrong?

I tried each of the varieties: Chicken Madras, Chicken Korma, Chicken Tikka Masala, and Spinach & Sweet Potato (pictured above). My son loves spicy food – he has a far higher tolerance of it than I do – and woofed down the Madras which I found outrageously hot. I was much happier with the Korma and Tikka Masala pizzas, which were gentle and enjoyable. These really do taste exactly as they sound so if you want a compromise between ordering Italian (!) or Indian, this would be a good one.  I will say that the £3 per pizza price tag puts them at the pricier end of the supermarket fresh pizza range.

Read an alternative review of Currizzas here. Find out more about Curry Dave and his Currizas here.

Pizza Express Christmas

Yes, more pizza. I went to Pizza Express’s unveiling of their Autumn and Winter menus. The Christmas fare included things like ‘Anatra’ (Peking duck) pizza which did taste like a duck pancake and ‘Festiva’ pizza which was a play on brie and cranberry.

But what stole the show for me and my fellow diner was the Mare Rossa.

Chunks of smoked salmon, prawn and tenderstem broccoli on a perfectly crisp base. The fish flavours on the tomato sauce was completely perfect. Loved it.

We were offered festive desserts such as mince pie cheesecake and chocolate tartufo but happily we were too stuffed on mare rossa pizza.

Check out the new Autumn menu at Pizza Express from 7th October, with the Christmas menu following on 11th November.

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Many thanks to Pizza Express, Curry Dave and Five Guys UK for their invites and samples. No-one asked for favourable reviews and I definitely don’t give them out lightly.

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food product review

heston blumenthal deep fat fryer review

I’ve dabbled with deep fat fryers in the past. I’ve often found them smelly and a pain to keep clean. One of mine in the past even burned a hole into its back!

I tried out the Sage by Heston Deep Fat Fryer recently. Like most things in the range, it’s a proper man-toy. All brushed steel and digital displays; it’s not exactly pink and fluffy.

Features-wise it prides itself on preset timings for various common foods. There are settings for a few things and in particular for twice-cooked chips. Smartly it overshoots the temperature, so that the food added to the oil brings the heat back down to the right setting.

And yet look at the first thing I try in it: tempura vegetables. So light, delicate and fragrant.

From there I made some light and fluffy churros, some battered chicken and of course those chips. The chips were of course as crisp and tender as you would expect, packed with potato flavour. (I talk a lot more about triple-cooked chips over here). As an aside I did have a go at mille-feuille chips but the whole thing disintegrated – back to the drawing board for now.

Contrary to popular belief deep frying is nowhere near as unhealthy as you think it might be. Please don’t misunderstand me; my next ebook isn’t going to be “deep fry yourself thin”. When you deep-fry in oil what’s happening is the high temperatures are forcing water to the surface of the food (that’s the bubbles you can see). When all the water is squeezed out that’s when the oil bleeds back into the cells of the food and starts to become unhealthy. This is why using a timer with a fryer is absolutely crucial. In that regard this fryer works great. The idea of having presets for things like frozen fish is also very cute – you input the weight and it calculates a time and temperature for you.

I do have issue with the price. It’s around £129.99. I can’t see the full value here. Even shopping around you can buy some very decent fryers at half the price and it’s difficult to see what the extra cost gets you. Don’t get me wrong, it looks the business and it’s definitely a decent bit of kit, but £130 is a little steep to me.

Thanks to Sage for sending me the fryer to try.

Here’s a bunch of tasty things you might want to make in your deep fat fryer:

Sweet and sour pork

Turkish Zucchini Fritters

Buttermilk Popcorn Chicken

The Sage by Heston Deep Fat Fryer is available from Amazon

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food kitchen gadgets product review

heston blumenthal kitchen wizz pro food processor review

You may have noticed I rarely do full-on review posts like this. It’s just not my thing. I’d run out of things to say too quickly. But for this gadget I’m willing to make an exception.

You know how some kitchen gadgets get used once, and even if you like them you’ll shuffle them away to a back cupboard? Or give them away? That’s not the case with this one. This one has invaded my kitchen to the point where I’ve put others away in the loft. My beloved Kenwood Prospero has been boxed up and relegated. The Kitchen Wizz Pro is the new bad boy in town.

And “bad boy” is somewhat appropriate; as I unboxed it from it’s Heston-heavy packaging Mrs. Spud said: “it is a boy’s toy, isn’t it?” and she’s right. Finished in brushed aluminium and dark greys, heavy as hell and packed with mean looking accessories, this is not your Nan’s Moulinex. If you like your kitchen toys to have a feminine edge this is not for you. It does also weigh a ton which is extremely useful when in operation but you need to know it takes effort to get it out of the cupboard.

As with many top-end gadgets, it’s the details that show you how well-crafted it is. It comes with a battery of chopping blades and attachments in their own neat box: grating blades, adjustable slicers, whisks, double choppers etc. plus a little spatula for scraping out and a cute brush for cleaning. One of my favourite gadgets is a chipper which turns potatoes into cute curved chips. Inside the chopping bowl itself is a smaller bowl you can use for working with smaller amounts of ingredients. The lid has a rubber seal so it really shuts fast. The hopper is huge (14cm!); you can fit a couple of potatoes widthways in it. The mixer also keeps a timer going as you use it so you can clock how long it’s been running.

I’ve road tested it on a whole bunch of different things: it’s taken on coleslaw, short pastry, whipping cream, cookies, whisking eggs, making onion and garlic puree, spice mixes… it’s made swift work of the lot. Pastry comes out the smoothest I’ve ever made it, all plasticine-soft. Biscuit crumbs for cheesecake bases come out like fine dust. And the sheer speed of it is terrifying. The weight keeps the gadget firmly on the counter, it’s not walking anywhere. It also cleans up as well as any other device of this nature; it is dishwasher-happy but I’d rather not put it in there to keep it as pristine as long as possible. That said water does get into the grip and I’ve no idea how to get it out of there, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

What are the downsides? I’d like to have variable speed on the mixing; it goes full whack (and scarily fast, but reasonably quietly) and comes with a pulse function, from time to time I’d prefer to use a slower speed. I can’t ignore the price: £399 RRP. It’s hardly the budget option but it really does feel like a Rolls Royce gadget and I can see it lasting for years (there is a generous 25 year warranty on the motor).

It’s fair to say I’m besotted with it and it’s one of the best kitchen gadgets I’ve ever used. Ask everyone to give you vouchers for birthday and Christmas and save up for one. It’s superb.

Thanks to Lindsey at MBA for sending me this to review. I’ve been road-testing it for about 7 weeks to give it a good going over. Read more about the Kitchen Wizz Pro at Sage Appliances. Buy online at Amazon

Categories
cream creme fraiche egg food kitchen gadgets lemon pastry

heston blumenthal’s lemon tart

Hold on to your toques, this is a Blumenthal gadget-fest. Here’s a run-down of the Heston kitchen toys employed in this recipe:

That’s a hell of a list. The odd one out in this list is the Kitchen Wizz Pro, a beast of a food processor, but more on that in a future post. I’ve also used my trusty chef’s knife, easily the best knife I’ve ever used. Most of them are Salter’s / HoMedics to celebrate the launch of their new range of Heston gadgets. It’s fair to say they’re a mixed bag.

The initial range of Heston By Salter tools are all solid: the probe thermometer, kitchen timer, fridge thermometer, oven thermometer, measuring jug, scales; all good. Some of the newer items feel superfluous. First up the adjustable rolling pin. It comes with discs that adjust the height of the pin from the surface. Genius! I was looking forward to this. As someone who is mostly terrible at pastry the ability to roll out to a consistent thickness really appealed to me. Unfortunately the pastry stuck immediately to the pin and made a complete mess. After prodding it for a while I transferred it to the pastry dish for baking and rolled it up loosely around the pin. Again it all stuck to the pin and essentially turned my smooth-plasticine dough to a patchwork quilt. Just look at the pastry in the picture, that’s supposed to be 3mm but it’s more like a centimetre! Very disappointing.

The whisk is much better, being well-balanced, sturdy and comfortable to hold when whisking an egg custard over a bain marie. The measuring spoons are a cute gimmick, in that you slide the compartment to the right measurement (e.g. 1 teaspoon, ½ tablespoon) and then drag a little lid over the powder to level it off. But a couple of things bothered me: my fingers were a little greasy from handling butter and I just couldn’t work it without putting everything down, washing hands and re-measuring. And I can’t get past the price: £17.99 RRP for two spoons when the same thing is achieved with a £1 (or less) set of plastic measuring spoons available anywhere, with the help of any knife for levelling.

Rounding out the collection are the spatulas which are quickly becoming two of my favourite things in the kitchen: with one curved end for sculpting and smoothing, and a firmer end for flipping and scraping. I use a lot of non-stick bakeware, frying pans and saucepans so having something to poke at the edges of something to flip it over is really handy. Again though I have to wince at the price: £17.99 for two spatulas isn’t great value.

All the equipment in the range is well made and thoughtfully designed, but these items are just not as “must have” as the original kitchen gadgets. They’d make great gifts though.

I used all these tools and more in making Heston’s lemon tart. There’s an awful lot of Heston in this; he spent years at the Fat Duck perfecting the ‘wobble’ in his cakes. It comes down to temperature – a tart at 70°C is perfectly set. And of course, he’s right. It’s a brilliant dessert, and the probe thermometer is the most essential gadget of them all. Just one niggle: serving with creme fraiche is a complete waste of time. Totally gets lost against the lemon flavour – don’t bother.

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Heston Blumenthal's lemon tart

Servings 12 people

Ingredients

For the pastry:

  • 120 g icing sugar
  • 3 large egg yolks
  • 300 g plain flour
  • 150 g unsalted butter
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla paste
  • Zest of ½ a lemon grated

For the filling:

  • 9 large eggs
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • Finely grated zest and juice of 5 lemons
  • 300 g double cream
  • 390 g caster sugar

To serve:

  • 80 g caster sugar
  • Creme fraiche

Instructions

  • Start with the pastry: blitz the icing sugar and yolks together and set aside. In a mixer mix the flour, butter and salt until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the vanilla, lemon and yolk mixture and continue to mix until you have a smooth, soft dough. Mould into a rectangle and allow to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
  • Preheat the oven to 180°C. After resting, roll the pastry to 3mm (ha ha) and line it in your 20cm tart tin. Prick with a fork all over and freeze for 30 minutes. Blind bake the base for 40 minutes and trim off the excess pastry. Drop the oven to 120°C.
  • Place the eggs and egg yolks in a bain marie and whisk together until it reaches 62°C (mine took about 10 minutes). At this point strain through a sieve, remove the bubbles from the surface with a metal spoon and pour into the pastry case. Bake until the filling reaches 70°C. Allow to cool to room temperature.
  • When ready to serve, sprinkle over the caster sugar and caramelise with a blow torch. Serve with creme fraiche if you like.

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