Heston Blumenthal

Dear Adam, I have to apologise for this but, unrfortunately, yours is the last question left. I simply do not have the time now to answer it. Possibly because it is such a good question and merits an answer that I cannot give at the moment. If you don't mind, please give us a call at the restaurant and I would love to talk further about this. See you Heston

Hello Simon, I do know of Miguels work. In fact, he has bottled and branded a gelling agent made from manioc, extracted from the edoe, a root vegetable. This product is great as it stabalises fatty emulsions when heated and is called "Micri". At the moment, the only people that I know sell it is "Valrhona" We have been doing some work on the synaptic work of foodstuffs. The trouble is with these related topics is that it is not like answering a question on a recipe or the state of British gastronomy, it requires pages of text. There are several aspects to this new approach to cooking, the molecular make up of foods, the science of cooking, brain to palate connection (including the psychology of taste) and actual effects on the mind and body from foods. In this q and a session, I have touched on most of these topics, although not as much as I would have liked to but the one that has not been spoken about is the effect on our minds and bodies of the foods that we could eat. I am trying to work on a menu that will cause mind and body response while eating. This idea was sparked off by a friend of mine, Dr Paul Clayton, whose book Health for life has caused quite a stir. The idea is that the courses will be comprised of foods that will induce physical-mental responses. It is very early days yet and this is the first time that I have spoken about it so please be a bit patient. We are lucky in this country in that we have some of the best people in the world when it comes to flavour psychiology and the study of the mind and emotion. Dr Charles Spence, at Oxford University has written a paper called "The ICI report on the secrets of the senses " and is available at a mere £200.00. It is however, one of the most definitive reports ever made on the senses and fits perfectly into our approach to cooking. This report has only just been released but it heralds a new approach to the way that the senses are looked at and is well worth looking at.

Hello again Cabrales, I am in a hurry as I have got to get in to the kitchen but your question is a great one that needs time to answer and discuss. As tonight is my cut off day for answering these questions, perhaps it would be an idea for you and "blind lemon higgins" to spend some time in the kitchen we can then discuss this further. Give us a call at the restaurant over the next week or so to sort out some dates. See you

Thanks for the kind words, I have thoroughly enjoyed the questions. With regards to low temp cooking in usijng domestic equipment, the one thing that I would say first, is get an oven thermometer and probe. You may be surprised at just how inaccurate your oven may be If you do have a therrmometer and have checked the temperature of your oven with this and it is still too high, don't worry; good results can still be achieved with an oven temperature as high as 100C. More care needs to be taken so that the meat does not overcook. Just remember that an internal temp of anything over 62C in anything but pork or chicken is moving into the medium to well done band. Resting meat is allways vital but the higher the temperature, the more rest the meat will need. I reckon for a chicken, an hour is good. So, for the probe, beef at 52 will be medium rare, lamb is round about this temp, perhaps a couple of degrees higher. Ps. If your oven allows, you could always wedge the door open!

Eating is the only thing we do that involves all of the senses. I don’t think that we realize just how much influence the senses actually have on the way that we process the information from mouth to brain. So many things influence the way that we perceive flavour. Even just the acceptability of food involves a complex process of evaluation. Firstly, we register the basic tastes, sweet, sour, salt, bitter and umami. These are then broken down into sub tastes, for example, spicy, metallic and astringent. We then evaluate the intensity of the flavour and its aroma along with the texture and temperature of the food, something vital to whether we decide to like it or not. Up to now these factors have been directly linked to taste. Now we have to process information that is indirectly linked to taste but directly linked to palatability. The colour and general appearance of the food and even its’ sound will have an influential role to play. Finally, even with all of this information processed we have not quite finished; whatever our food may taste like, it still has to pass on the accessibility stakes! Our health and mood will also directly affect whether or not we like a particular food, as will our environment and cultural background. This complex process might explain why one food can taste so good to one person and so bad to another! It really is that subjective. This might also explain just why our pre-conceptions can, on their own decide for us whether or not we like the taste of something. Eating, above all should be a thing of pleasure and, dare I say it, fun! It should stir conversation and not stern silence. It should excite, charm and challenge and not become a chore. There is alot of work being done at the moment on this very subject by people ranging from Nerologiists to Prof. of flavour technology and is something that warrants pages of text.

Robert, Italy is truly one of the worlds great culinary countries. I think that the problem when it comes to the question of Italy being hardly relavent to the world of modern gastronomy is, I think, that the benchmark for modern gastronomy is still the MIchelin guide and notably the third star. Classical french cooking can fit into this category of gastronomy and , above all comfort far more easily than Italian cookery can. It also seems to me that that more people go to Italy to eat regional food than for a gastronomic (haute-cuisine) trip. I think one thing to mention is that, until recently, Italian cuisine has been very rigid in its' regionality. if you are from a certain part of Northern Italy and do not put a Parma ham knuckle bone in your tomato sauce, it simply was not acceptable. The same goes with the un-written law that parmesan should never be incorporated into a seafood dish when pasta or rice are involved. There is now a new breed of chef that I think will go some way to change this. One is my friend Davide Scabino in Torrino who recently gained his first star by cooking regional Italian food. This however, is not what he enjoys cooking and if you request that the meal is left to him, then you geone course consisting of a scuba diving back pack and told to breath through the mask. You get a jet of oxtail vapor! I am not suggesting for one minute that this is the way forward for Italian cooking, but I do think that chefs like Davide herald the beginning of a new chapter in Italian cooking.

I have a very good pastry chef and one who does give a certain amount of input to the menu. The dishes themselves come mainly from me. The approach to a dish is not necessarily the same. The idea could come from something historical like the sweetcorn with chocolate which stemmed from the fact that several hundred years ago when chocolate was first introduced into Italy, it was paired with polenta. Although in a savory state, I then started thinking about chocolate and corn. There is also the big issue of flavour memory, which is covered on the web site www.fatduck.co.uk. I am trying to work on the idea of an almost adult sweet shop for petits fours. With regards to expected sweet ingredients to be used in savoury dishes and vice versa, you are right, history has a very influencial role to play. Some of the dishes on the menu now and some of the stuff that we are working on are; Chocolate fondant with harissa ice cream, piquillo pepper compote, dried apricot and orange flower water puree, lavender seed and myrrh Macerated strawberries, coriander seed, black olive puree, pistachio scrambled egg and parmesan Pineapple-crab-basil Carrot toffee, carrot and violet ice cream injected with pumpkin seed oil and dried carrot with coriander The ice cream or jelly with four seperate flavours in one mouthful Savory-sweet candy floss Essential oils encapsulated in a grain of carbohydrate; giving bursts of flavours to dishes The use of fructose to enhance fruit flavours The use of a range of non-sweet sugars to invert the perception of sweet-non sweet dishes The use of flavours that are normally associated with smells and household products ie pine and ambrox Although a taster, I hope that this is enough of a stimulator for you Thanks, although it has been a bit of work, especially when still trying to run a restaurant, the range and quality of the questions has been fantastic.

I want to make something very clear. Something that I have said on several occasions before. I am not for one minute suggesting that the appliance of science in the kitchen is the only way to cook, or that it superseeds classical cooking. It does question more and although it has proved some previously set in stone cookery myhts wrong, there are many classical lores that have been around for a couple of hundred years that are unqestionable. Ultimately nothing should detract from the fact that the end result must taste good. By taste, I do include all of the other senses (sight, smell etc). I am precluding the whole question of what does and does not taste great and the whole perception of flavour topic. Altohugh this is the most exciting thing happening in food at the moment, it is something for a completely seperate discussion. I certainly do not believe that there is only one way to cook something. After all tastes vary greatly. If someone likes their meat well done, is that wrong? Or what about the skin on top of a rice pudding. Some love it and others hate it. This would determine the way that the rice pudding was cooked. What I am a firm believer in though, is the fact that when it comes to meat cookery, an oven thermometer and probe will give the cook a far better chance of attaining a desired result, time and time again. This will hopefully lead rise to increased confidence and encouragement to move on to new things. After all ,many people would much rather cook something that they know they can do well, rahther than attempting something quite ambitious for the first time and living in fear of it going pear-shaped. Imagine somebody serving a whole salmon, for example and rather than serve something raw, will cook the fish for longer. This will more likely result in an overcooked fish. With the use of an oven thermometer to make sure that the oven is not hotter than the set temperature and a probe, the salmon can be cooked exactly how you want it. Not to an unquestionable temperature but to a desired one.

Hello Gavin, I really do believe that there is a huge untapped potential for haute cuisine chefs to work with industrial food processing companies. These companies can bring great expertise in techniques and food psychology whilst the chefs can bring creativity and detailed technical skill. There will obviously be areas that are not common ground. The two main differences are that the food companies need to produce massive quantities at a price and that these foods need to be able to be transported all over the world and to have a long shelf life These food companies are in the business of making money and up until now, to bring a new food to production, they have to justify sales that put the more haut couture style of food out of the equation. I have a feeling though that over the next five years, things will change. These food companies are far more eager to try and become more inventive. Speaking from my own experience, I have had quite a lot of interest from several food companies and a supermarket chain wanting to move forward and become more inventive with products. The problem is however, that they are still nervous about how far they can go so for the moment are very cautious. In fact, on this subject, we are involved in a new EEC project called INNICON, which I think that I have mentioned in one of my other answers. This project involves four restaurants around Europe along with a cookery school in Paris, an engineering company, a flavour company and a food technology company. The idea is that by all working together, we can come up wit new techniques, produce new pieces of equipment and even look at manufacturing new ingredients both to make life in the kitchen easier, saving time, improving cooking techniques and coming up with new dishes. So, in answer to your question, I think that haute-cuisine chefs could become akin to haute-couturiers for fasion houses but in a slightly less direct way. One thing that I am sure about however, is that the next five years will see major changes in food developement.

Hello Samantha, Thankfully my children have no craving at all for Burger king, Macdonalds or KFC. My youngest daughter wouldnt actually mind visiting some of these places as she may get a free toy but not to eat anything. Jessica, the middle child and oldest of our two daughters loves shellfish; muscles, clams and prawns along with most fish. Jack, My son however, is a carbohydrate freak. Pasta in particular but Pizza chips and sandwiches will do nicely thank you! All our children do however, much like most kids have room for sweets, biscuits and chocolate; at any time of the day!

Hello John, Its' great that you tried the potaotes,. Indeed the lack of salt does show through at the end in terms of seasoning. The problem is that salting the cooking of water can really affect the crust on the potatoes. I have to be honest however and say that I have not tried salting the potatoes whilst they are roasting, this may not be anywhere near as detrimental and may produce a better-seasoned result. How about injecting the potato with a saline solution, or even something else (sorry, I am going off ona tangent here!) One thing that I tend to do is to cut the potatoes quite small; this way the lack of seasoning in the centre will not be so apparant. I also then use a mixture of fine salt and fleur de sel which works well. Certainly a completely different set of factors apply when talking aboutthe use of salt in the cooking of other vegetables. The only time that I would not use salt when cooking potatoes is when the potato is required to be served crisp (browned), otherwise salt would allways be added. Salt in the cooking water of pasta is important altohugh having said that, we have been doing a bit of work on this recently and adding a really healthy (if you can use this word) dose of salt in the pasta dough, enough to make it taste too salty gives the dough more resistance and bite and in this case, it is not so important to salt the water. This is because the sodium in the salt forms quite strong bonds (although not as much as calcium) and creates a tougher structure in the dough. There is a huge on going argument as to the benefits of salt in meat cookery and wether or not it should be added at the beginning middle or end or at all three stages? There is still no definate agreement. Even my friend Herve This, the french molecular gastronomist (he has a phD in this!)held a workshop on this very subject!

We are still looking at wine and food combinations and this is an area that requires an awfull amount of work still to be done on it. Over the past couple of years of carrying out wine and food pairings, a pattern was emerging. Interestingly enough, it was a pretty basic one; the strongest dishes seemed to go with the most complex wines. Ok, so this is not exactly a groundbreaking finding and although pretty interesting, does not at all go along with the current line of tinking of The Fat Duck. I had been thinking for a while now; if a red wine smells, for example of blackcurrant, it is not blackcurrants making that aroma but a compound or collection of compounds that make up this aroma that also exist in blackcurrants. If we can then analyse those flavour molecules and see what else they exist in, perhaps we can emerge with some great wine and food pairings. This theory is still an embryo in my mind but I do think that there is a potential here for a new approach to wine and food pairings; watch this space! Wine has often been the catalyst for a dish. For example, we have a dish combining scallops with caramelised cauliflower puree, cep and sherry jelly. The sherry jelly was in fact the origin of that dish. Every other element stemmed from the sherry jelly. We are currently putting a few wines through the mass specrometer to do a sniff test and analysis on the wine. This why we can look at possible combinations. I haven't done any work yet with beer or scotch but give me a year and I am sure that I could do quite a bit of research on these! On the whole though, it is not wine that I find difficult to pair food with but certain foods with wine. Soft-boiled egg yolks are an absolute killer as the runny yolk completely coats the mouth accentuating the acidity tremendously. On a final note, I am completely amazed how a wine maker can turn out unbelievable results from just a bunch of grapes!

Hello Cabrales, I wold be lying to say that it was not an ambition to obtain a third Michelin star. It is however, not the driving force for me. If it were then I agree with your point about the guide being unpredictable and would be cooking food that was far "safer" and appealed to a much wider audience. I have come this far though and have obviously taken a fair amount of flack in the past for various aspects of what I do, that to change now is just not an option. After all, I love it as I am learning so much each week. The more I learn, the more I realise I don't know. We also have a problem that the building we are in is not sufficient for us any more. We need more space, a bit of land, somewhere to have a drink before and after the meal and a lot more kitchen space. We have so much more to achieve in terms of the food and I hope that, with that will come other things but all in good time. I am not going to pin my hopes on it as I may either become disappointed, or try to figure the guide out and adapt my cooking accordingly. Not only would this probably not make any difference but is also wrong. The guide is for the customer and not the restaurant and should not be responsible for influencing the way that people cook. The develpopement of the food is definatley being held back. I would have said that a couple of years ago, the standards for achieving a third star in France were loaded on to the grandeur and sevice but in the last couple of years, things have changed so much that now I don't know. I think that any guide on earth is going to cause strong feeling as to who it does and does not award ratings to.

THere are most definately a number of precautions that need to be taken when cooking meats at lower temperatures. Chicken, for example needs to be cooked above the temp threshold for salmonela and amylobacter. This needs 64C. Salmonela is killed at prolonged exposure at 65C (say for thirty minutes). In fact in the production of ice cream there is a method known as LTLT or low temperature long time pasteurisation where the custard is kept at 60C for 45mins. Having said all of this however, chickens like the ones from Bresse that are pure breeds and not subjected to antibiotics have a far lower salmonela count than the intensively reared nonesense that is available to most of us. In terms of meat like lamb anf beef. Think about the centre of a rare steak. This will be barely above 40C, significantly lower than the low temperature cooking ranges that I normally advocate. Indeed much of the risk element comes into play when meat is to be cooked stored and re-heated. In particular Botulinum. When cooking at home and cooking and serving this is not a problem. For any of you however that cook sous-vide, this dangerous bacteria loves the absense of air and this can be a potential danger. This bacteria although surviving in the presence of even salt, can not do so in nitrate salt or the chacuterie-style pink salt. So, low temp cooking is fine if precautions are followed. I personally feel that 64C is too hot for pork but you need to know the origins of your meat!

Hello Omar, I am sorry, I haven't tried your recipe yet. In fact I am a little embarrassed to say that I haven't got it any more. Can you let me have a copy again and I will give it a go. I think that the term "Sealing" is wrong as it suggests that juices are going to be held in the meat by doing this. There is no way that you can hold juices in a piece of meat by creating a crust on the outside. Imagine a piece of meat as a wet sponge. As the temperature of the meat tissue rises, the proteins contract and eventually contract so much (think about scrambled egg) thsat they force the juices out of the meat, much like squeezing a sponge. This will happen whether or not the meat as been browned. In fact, on the discovery series, Peter and I made a test with three pieces of steak, same weight same cut from the same animal and hung for the same time. We weighed the pieces and browned all of them. We then cooked the three pieces to rare, medium and well done. The well done steak had lost over one third of its' weight while the rare one had lost very little. Browning does however have an important role to play; it adds flavour and under certain conditions will allow you to make a great sauce with the juices left in the pan. Harold McGee came up with a great way of cooking steak. Basically, you place the steak in a hot frying pan and cook it, flipping every fifteen seconds. This way a nice crust forms but the heat never stays long enough to do too much damage to the inside of the meat.

Hello Andy, I was in fact aproached by Penguin to write this book over four years ago. At first I was not particularly interested in doing it. The more that I thought about it however, the more it made sense. Firstly, there is no way that I would have writtena a book on the food at the restaurant as it is changing and has still not yet fully formed as it were. Secondly, as the science of cooking approach to gastronomy along with the psychology of eating was becoming ever more influencial on the way that I cooked, there seemed a need for a book that was going to show that this approach can work on any level and particularly on the most important level of all. Introducing children to cooking along with their parents at the same level. For some reason we consider childrens palates to be as naieve as their education which is ludricous. Most children develop food fussiness through their parents. The book contains a couple of hundred recipes which are not that important, it is the technique and approach behind these that is the point of this book. The book contains a lot of new information and stuff that has never been in print before. There is a lot about what happens to meat tissue at different temperatures along with a whole load of other stuff on the science of cooking and the psychology of flavour. I am really excited by it as I think that it does make a big step to make this approach to cooking totally accessible to the public and also contains a wealth of information for the home cook and chef alike. I will probably do a Fat Duck book one day but I wont write it myself like this one, an eighty hour plus week does not really allow for book-writing. This explains why "Family food" was two years late!

It depends. The idea for a dish can come from anywhere really, both an ingredient or technique can spark off an idea. I do however, find it a bit of a nightmare to find quality fruit and veg in this country. I think that, for this reason, technique began to be the primary driving force for a new dish. My drive now is the fascination of why one dish can taste fantastic to one person and disgusting to another and how we process the information from our mouths to our brain.

Robert, Thanks for your question, a very good one at that. Firstly I think that the term "molecular gastronomy" does not do this approach any favours at all. Although this term was coined a few years ago in this country ( the origin of the science of cooking) and it describes perfectly the adaptation of science in the kitchen, it makes it sound like you need a nuclear physics degree to understand it! At its roots, molecular gastronomy does not mean white chocolate and caviar, it is simply deals with what happens to ur food when we cook it. So, whether it is roasting a chcken, boiling an egg or making a cup of tea, an understanding of the science of cooking makes these tasks easier and, in the case of things going wrong in the kitchen it puts you in a far better position to rectify them. I do agree with you that a menu dotted with foams for example is not the way forward and that food of the future should in no way loose sight of its classical roots. I just think that there is a whole new world of cooking and eating out there that is hithertoo undiscovered. After all,sweetcorn and chocolate, tobacco in cooking and parmesan ice cream have been made for nearly two hundred years so what is "classical cooking? I think that the basic premise of using impeccable produce with true technique could never be questioned. One of the best examples that I can think of how the knowledge of the science of cooking can improve classical kitchen technique is in the roasting of a chicken. The probelm is how to cook a chicken so that the breast and leg are cooked perfectly. Either the breast is spot on the legs are not cooked or the legs are cooked and the breasts are like cardboard. Th classical solution is to cook the chicken first on one leg, then on the other asnd finally on its back, so that the heat from the roasting tray would speed up the cooking of each of the legs while resting on it. I then begen to think, if the oven is on fixed temperature, why should the roasting tray be hotter than the air in the oven? It is because the heat retaining capacityof the breasts are different to that of the legs. The breasts heat up much faster a given temperature. Imagine then, placing a chicken in an oven set at 180C with the intention of cooking the chicken to an internal temperature of 65C to 70C. The breasts reach the desired internal temperature before the legs as the oven is set at 180C. The breasts, waiting for the legs just get hotter and hotter and, by the time that the legs have reached the desired temperature, the breasts have probably hit 100C and are as dry as anything. If however, the oven is set at say 70C, then although the breasts reach the desired temperature first, they do not get any hotter while waiting for the legs. This way a perfectly roast chicken is obtained. The only downside to this is that there are no browning flavours on the skin. THis can be countered by giving the chicken a very quick blast in the hottest oven possible for five to ten minutes. The collaboration of chef and scientist is certainly not responsible for so called "whacky" combinations but can lead to a greater understanding of what happens to our food when we cook it. It is my night off, on a Sunday night and although I call it a half day, I have been at work until nearly 6pm and could not wait till I got home to eat my ost eagerly anticipated meal of the week; my wifes roast chicken with roast potatoes, cauliflower cheeses and braised carrots..........FANTASTIC! Oh, of course the time with my family makes it more special!

Hello Jd There are quite a lot of things that we have been working on. Unfortunately, because of the lack of space in our kitchen, experimentation is extremely difficult. A couple of years ago, I purchased a still for carrying out low temperature distillation. It is now at home in the cupboard under the stairs because there is no room for it anywhere! As I have mentioned, we are still working on a one-mouthfull dish that delivers four flavours. These flavours however, will not be perceived together but consecutively which is something that we never normally experience. This dish will only work as one mouthfull as by the second mouthfull, the last flavours of the first mouthfull will still be there. We are still working on the Nostalgia food idea (as explained on the web site) and I rekon that this will also lead into a potentially controversial and almost unresolvable debate. When is a chemical not a chemical? Nostalgia foods to many people are in fact neither beef stew and dumplings nor bread and butter pudding but synthetically flavoured foods that in general were consumed as confectionary. The question that for me begs to be answered is "when is a chemical not a chemical?" If we smell balckcurrant in a red wine, it is not the smell of blackcurrant but a molecule or group of molecules that make up this aroma. These are chemicals-produced naturally from the wine-making process. Is it wrong therefore to use these chemicals in cooking? Just a question at the moment but one that will surely stir up response and something that has been in my mind for a while now. I am not quite sure just how it will develop, but it will! Right, back to other stuff that we are working on; We have just started to serve an orange and beetroot jelly, served as a rectangular, terrine-like slice of jelly which is yellow-orange colour on the left and beetroot coloured on the right. The yellow-orange colour which looks like orange is in fact made from yellow beetroot and the beetroot-looking jelly is in fact made from blood orange so the flavours expected in each colour are, in fact reversed. It is quite a shock expecting to taste acidity in what looks like the orange jelly and instead tasting earthiness. Other stuff that we are working on is nitrogen-poaching the sour. We serve a palate-cleansing foam made from green tea, vodka and lime, foamed in a whipped cream cannister, as developed and popularised by Ferran Adria I was talking with one of my chefs, Liam who suggested poaching this in nitrogen. Nitrogen is -190C and therefore very cold indeed. By injecting a ball of mousse into this liquid, it poaches in about twenty seconds, being turned over half way through. When eaten, the foam is frozen on the outside and nice and soft in the centre-much like a cooked meringue (but frozen). When eaten, jets of vapour shot out of each nostril! We have been looking at sound and just houw it affects the perception of texture. When we crunch something like a polo mint, our teeth do not bash together. Our brain registers the crunch and turns off the signal that brings our teeth together, as needs to happen when we chew. If we listen (through headphones) to crunching noises and chew (as is necessary with gum) at the same frequency, our brain tells our jaw to stop before it needs to (when chewing, our teeth need to come together) and therefore throws the whole perception of what the texture of the food in our mouth actually is. We are still working on the idea of giving a dish with a set of headphones but it may be a while yet! We are also doing a lot of work with aromas and the idea that the flavour of a dish can be changed by spraying while eating. As well as this, I am trying to sort out a dish that gets sprayed at the table. It smells of one thing and tastes of another. Other recent stuff that we have been looking at is injecting a raw egg through the shell with an essential oil of smoked bacon and boiling it. THe result is bacon and egg inside a boiled egg. We are working on sucking out the yolk of a soft-boiled egg through the shell and ijecting it with a red wine sauce so you get, instead of eggs in red wine, red wine in eggs! Injecting potato wit essential oil of butter and taking a carrot and garlic and injecting each of them witth the essential oil of the other provides very interesting results. There is a lot more than this but I have to stop somewhere and the problem lies in how long it takes us to get a dish from experimentation to the table and also how ready a lot of the British public is for this kind of stuff. I think at the moment not very. We still have a problem with our meat being too pink and fish not being cooked enough and food not being piping hot!

Hello Omar, How are you? Well, because of my work and the fact that I have three children, we really don't go out that often. I think that my favourite restaurant would have to be Maliks tandoori in Cookham high street. It is a great Indian restaurant and almost once a week, Malik knocks up a fantastic selection of dishes for me. A couple of months ago, my friend Harold McGee was over for the filming on one of the episodes of the television series that was on Discovery. We went out to Maliks together and they cooked something not off the menu for us, It was the best Indian cooking that Harold and I had eaten.

Ok Lizziee, here is a list of a few of them, Strawberry and coriander Snails and Beetroot (the flavour molecule that contributes to the earthiness in each of these is the same. It also exists in spinach and baby corn) Chocolate and pink peppercorn Carrot and violet (ionone is the main pairing molecule here) Carrot and coriander Mango and violet Pineapple and blue cheese (careful as the cheese needs a certain ketone level) Caraway and lavender are surprisingly interchangeable Cauliflower (caramelised) and cocoa Liver and Jasmine (similar sulphur compounds Cooked cheese (like parmesan and gruyere) and honey (with a slightly chestnut character) Banana and parsley Harissa (chilli paste) and dried apricot I hope that this give you a "taster"

Of course you can give it a go, here is the recipe. Without a shadow of a doubt, the most important thing of all is the potato itself. Contrary to popular belief, although the variety of potato is important, it is not as important as the quality of the potato itself. Things like the length of time that the potato has been stored and just how wet the ground was thatt he potato had been grown in can make a massive difference to the end results. So as long as you do you cook off witht he same potatoes, preferably from the same bag, you will have a fair comparison. Peel the potatoes and cut each one preferably into quarters, if possible eight pieces- the idea here is to make a lot of sharp edges that will crisp up nicely. Rinse them off thoroughly and leave them in a container of water Bring a pan of unsalted water to the boil and add the potates Cook, simmering until the potatoes are pretty soft. Still intact but before they have started to break uo and become waterlogged. Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 190C When the pots are ready, drain them carefully and leave in a colander to steam a little. Sprinkle over a little plain flour and carefully turn the potatoes in this. Pour either olive oil or groundnut oil into the roasting tray and place in the hot oven for ten minutes. When very hot, add the potatoes, making sure that they are all turned in the oil so that they are completely covered in it. Place in the oven. After half an hour, add three or four garlic cloves, bashed After one hour, add a very generous amount of thyme and rosemary keep cooking, turning regularly until the pots are nice and crisp. Season with fine salt, sea salt and pepper and serve It is important to make sure in this recipe that the potato is cooked as much as possible without breaking up beforehand.

Norris, I forgot to add that there should have been a sentence on the web site about this. It will definatley be on there within a week.

We use a couple of different butters in the kitchen. Lescure butter for general use and for some pastry use we have a special butter with a lower water content. In the restaurant we use a hand made unpasteurised butter from the Charentes with slight acidity. It is unsalted. We do also keep some Echire in stock to cover for people who don't want to eat unpasteurised butter, pregnant women for example

Hello Norris Nigel became a father last christmas and has left to look at pursuing another career; one that will allow him time to be a father-something that this career does not allways allow! He is considering writing a comedy on the restaurant business which could be brillilant.