My head is very sensitive to heat.
I can tell the temperature of a room within half a degree between 18 and 24degC by what my head is doing. The rest of my body is fine. Jay Taylor, who has directed a lot of my TV shows, said to me that it must be the worst superhero power: I’m Head Thermometer Man. So what do I do? I choose one of the hottest jobs - apart from glass-blowing or feeding a steam-train furnace - that you can do: working in a kitchen. Now I’ve gone to live in one of the hottest places in France. I’m not sure what that’s about either. Perhaps I’m creating my own adversity so new life can grow or something.
I’ve fallen back in love with cooking.
I’ve done more than 100,000 hours in the kitchen and, a couple of years ago, I’d just had enough. I sound like some old, retired gun-slinger hanging up his gun, but I just felt like a hamster on a wheel. In the last six months, let’s say, I started not only falling back in love with it, but I’ve brought with that my past, all of the pantechnicon, loads of information, discoveries and techniques that I created over the years. Rather than putting so many ingredients in, which is what I did before, I keep it really simple: applying that to a fried egg or a piece of toast even. It’s a bit like if you paint, I suppose: you add more colours and then you put on another colour and it’s too much.
The movie Ratatouille is probably the most accurate gastronomic film about three-Michelin-star cooking that has ever been made, if you take away the rats in the kitchen.
My earliest positive food experience was going for ice cream with my gran and sister when I was 6 or 7. She would drag us around this Steptoe and Son bric-a-brac market off the Edgware Rd, with people selling old junk off the back of a horse-drawn cart. It was the last thing you wanted to do as kids, but on the way back we went past Regent Snack & Milk Bar, an Art Deco ice cream parlour run by a couple of Sicilian guys. I remember getting ice cream in a little tub with a wooden spoon in a brown paper bag and we couldn’t touch it until we got back home. It was about 10 minutes’ walk, but that walk seemed to last two hours. Later on, you realise it was like working for a reward. It became such a magical thing for me.
Basically all the work I’ve been doing for the past few years has been on water. We know what to do with water: we bathe in it, we swim in it, we drink it, we cook with it, we power engines with it. But we don’t know what it is.
Is there any food I can’t stand? The only food I remember eating that my throat decided to tell the rest of my body to get stuffed was on a fishing boat in Iceland. I was given kaest skata, which is fermented skate: I think they used to pee on it, but now they bury it in the ground to let the ammonia develop. The flesh looks really beautifully cooked, and it’s a delicacy for older people in Iceland, but I went to swallow it and my throat basically catapulted the fish straight out of my mouth. My body or my gut said: "No, you’re not coming in."
It’s funny how people are happy to eat a prawn but they wouldn’t eat an insect. The first time I used insects, I made worm pizzas for Alder Hey children’s hospital and the kids loved it. It was a bit like Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes. At home, I’ve got cricket powder, small mealworms, which have lots of umami, the fried ones are like eating popcorn. And they are incredibly high-protein.
This is the most excited motivated, focused, energised, contented, fulfilled that I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Watch this space - it’s like a new chapter, a big new page turn.
RATATOUILLE
Did you ever see the film Ratatouille?
Emotion, memories and associations play a big part in how much we enjoy our food. The film follows the fortunes of a rat who dreams of becoming a chef. It’s funny and fast-paced and probably the most accurate gastronomic movie I’ve ever seen - which is not surprising since my friend Thomas Keller was an adviser for the film.
However, the scene I love the most involves the grim-faced food critic Anton Ego (who, it is rumoured, was either based on Francois Simon or on another friend of mine, the late A.A. Gill). When Ego tastes the rat’s ratatouille, it’s so flavoursome it triggers big emotions and transports him right back to childhood. I think of this as the "ratatouille moment" and my goal is to make all my dishes as evocative as this.
My Favourite Things
Food: I don’t have one. Do you mean my favourite food right now? Or my favourite food in winter? My favourite food at Christmas? My favourite food on my birthday? My favourite food on my kid’s birthday?
Place to eat: Chez moi, in Provence.
Dish to make: If I was to pick one, it would probably be ratatouille. It’s a Provencal dish, so I live with aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, courgettes and onions, but it’s also something that I’ve spent a lot of time on.
THE BOOK
Is This a Cookbook? by Heston Blumenthal, published by Bloomsbury ($49.99, hardback)
Illustrations © Dave McKean
Photographs © Haarala Hamilton
Cover photograph © Neale Haynes, 2022/Contour by Getty Images
Heston Blumenthal’s ratatouille
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
For the tomato compote
2kg best-quality, ripe tomatoes (with stems), about 20 to 22
3 garlic cloves, peeled - 2 thinly sliced and 1 finely chopped
20 to 22 fresh basil leaves
Salt and black pepper
Generous pinch of unrefined caster sugar
2 to 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
2 sprigs of fresh tarragon
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 star anise
2 tsp tomato ketchup
Several drops of Worcestershire sauce
Bouquet garni (2 bunches of fresh thyme, 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, 2–4 sprigs of fresh tarragon, tied together)
Sherry vinegar, to taste
Maple syrup, to taste
For the ratatouille
1 small fennel bulb, coarse outer layer removed (about 130g trimmed weight)
2 aubergines, inner seed area removed (about 300g trimmed weight)
2 courgettes (about 450g trimmed weight)
Olive oil for cooking
1 quantity tomato compote (from above)
2 peeled roasted red peppers (from a jar)
1 sprig of fresh thyme
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
To finish
Small handful of fresh tarragon
Handful of fresh basil
1 tsp coriander seeds
Tarragon vinegar, to taste
Method
Tomato compote
To prepare the tomatoes, remove the stems and set aside for later. Using a small, sharp knife, gently prise out and discard the top core of each tomato. Also, make a very shallow criss-cross incision on the bottom of each one. Bring a large pan of water to the boil and have a large bowl of iced water to hand. You may need to work in batches, depending on the size of your pan. Add the tomatoes to the pan and blanch for 15 seconds. Immediately remove them, using a slotted spoon, and plunge into the iced water for 5 minutes.
Once all the tomatoes are done, peel away and discard the skins. Slice the tomatoes in half through the top, then use a teaspoon to scoop out all the flesh and seeds into a large sieve placed over a bowl. Set aside the hollowed-out tomato halves.
Using the back of a wooden spoon, press the contents of the sieve through into the bowl underneath, extracting as much juice as possible. Discard the contents of the sieve. You should get approximately 500g tomato juice.
Divide the tomato halves into two equal batches. Roughly chop one batch into smaller pieces and add to the bowl of tomato juice. Preheat the oven to 90degC/fan 70degC and line a baking tray with baking paper.
Place the remaining tomato halves, cut side up, on the tray and put a sliver of garlic and a basil leaf on each one. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and sprinkle with the sugar. Top each with a snippet each of thyme and tarragon. Place in the low oven for about 3 hours, checking on the tomatoes every now and then. You want them softened, but still holding their shape (not as dry as store-bought sun-dried tomatoes).
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large pan over a medium heat, add the onion, star anise and chopped garlic and cook gently until softened, without colour. Add the tomato ketchup and Worcestershire sauce and stir well to combine then add the chopped tomatoes and juice. Bring to a gentle simmer, reduce the heat to low and cook for 2½ to 3 hours, adding the bouquet garni halfway through cooking. Cook the tomato compote for a further 1 hour or until the mixture is completely jammy. For the last 20 minutes, add the tomato stems that you set aside. When the compote is done, remove and discard the herbs, star anise and tomato stems. Taste and adjust the seasoning with a little sherry vinegar and maple syrup.
Ratatouille
Preheat the oven to 190degC/fan 170degC. Finely chop the fresh vegetables into 5mm dice, keeping them separate.
Heat a very generous glug of olive oil in a large pan and cook the vegetables separately until softened: allow 4–5 minutes for the fennel over a moderate heat; 3–4 minutes for the aubergines over a high heat; 2–3 minutes for the courgettes over a high heat. As each batch of vegetables is cooked, remove with a slotted spoon, leaving the oil in the pan.
Combine the cooked vegetables and tomato compote. Chop the roasted peppers and add them in. Season with salt and add the thyme and rosemary. Transfer to a large baking dish and cook in the oven for 10–15 minutes.
Just before serving, pick out and discard the rosemary and thyme sprigs. Finely chop the tarragon and basil and stir through the ratatouille. Scatter over the coriander seeds and add a little tarragon vinegar if you like.
Notes:
This compote takes some prepping (get channelling your inner sous-chef) and involves a lengthy roasting and stewing of ingredients. Sometimes it does us good to slow things down and take a different perspective. A slow cook can produce a really intense, complex depth of flavour. You’ll taste your own dedication and patience right there on the plate. Make a big batch of this compote and you’ve got the key ingredient for other dishes too - tomato and coffee muffins, pasta puttanesca and tomato compote ketchup.
Plus, you can use it to finish risottos, spread it on toast, or embellish fish or sausages with it.
Once you’ve added the bouquet garni, taste the mixture every 20 minutes or so. If you find the flavour of the herbs is becoming too strong, remove them as we only want them to add "warmth".
When the compote is ready, it will have taken on a wonderful deep red colour and become almost jam-like. It will keep in the fridge, in a covered container, for up to 5 days.
This might seem fiddly (although there’s a strange geometrical pleasure to be had in achieving cuboid uniformity - or maybe that’s just me), but it means the veg cook evenly and at the same rate.
And by cutting them so small, the surface area is increased, giving more flavour.
You want them softened but still with some "bite" and, ideally, you want to avoid getting any colour or caramelisation on the vegetables, so keep an eye on them, stirring regularly and taking the pan on and off the heat as required.
- The Guardian
