Heston Blumenthal

Hello Lizziee The caviar and white chocolate combination is now a couple of years old but still a very strong dish and one the one that opened up the whole world of possibilites of flavour combining. There is an obvious reason why you could argue that white chocolate and caviar go together and that is because of the fact that you are pairing fat and salt The combination however runs a lot deeper than that. The amine levels in caviar and white chocolate are such that the two ingredients almost "melt" together. This lead me to start experimenting with other amine rich foods. Cheese being one of them. Sure enough, in certain forms this combination worked very well indeed. I then decided to test this theory of combining foods with similar flavour profiles by looking at two flavours that, to me definately did not go together; coffee and basil. We looked at the flavour profiles of these two ingredients that, when tasted together really were quite unpleasant and do you know what? They had nothing in common! The sardines on toast ice cream came about while talking to someone about the bacon and egg ice cream that we were allready serving. I think that I suggested, initially as a joke, that we could make bacon and egg on toast ice cream. I then started thinking-why not try buttered toast in an ice cream mix? We tried all sorts of things from chip butties to sausage rolls, burgers to marmelade on toast. The sardines on toast idea was fuelled by the fact that it was a real childhood taste for me. It wasnt as straight forward as that, as we had to do quite a bit of work on the ice cream mix itself-getting the flavour and texture right. In the restaurant, we serve it with a wafer thin (sliced on a meat slicer) piece of sour dough walnut bread with a few grains of gruyere on it, half dried and cubes of tomato ketchup jelly with some parsley oil.

I suppose that in some ways you could call a chef a problem solver although most of us try and get to a position where the problem does not arise in the first place! I really do feel that this is where an understanding of the science of cooking will make a difference. It provides the confidence and the know how to give much more hope to rectify a problem in the kitchen. Inspiration for dishes can come from all walks of life. I will give you some examples. Tobacco chocolates. Tobacco has been used in cooking in certain countries for centuries but it was not until I went to a cigar shop in my home town of Marlow nearly four years ago to buy a particular cigar from a customer that the idea for chocolates came to me. I noticed behind the counter that there was a row of jars labelled Cherry, Christmas pudding and Chocolate amongst other things. When told thet they were flavoured pipe tobacco, I asked to have a sniff. I was surprised at how pleasant they smelt. The idea came while smelling the chocolate flavoured tobacco. I then just reversed the mix, instead of chocolate flavoured tobacco, how about tobacco flavoured chocolate. Parsnip cereal We did a lot of work on looking at which vegetables benefitted from being cooked whilst trying to retain their volatile components and which ones did not. Brocolli was definately better when some of its' volatile compounds were removed by evaporation. Cooked in a sous-vide bag, strong stewed brussel sprout flavour resulted. When cooking parsnips for a puree in a sous-vide bag, the parsnips came out really well. While pureeing them, I tasted the milk that we cooked them in and was instantly reminded of the milk left at the bottom a bowl of cereal. Sligthly yeast-like and sweet. I then set about drying parsnips to make cereal. White chocolate and caviar discs. This one is really interesting as it has sparked off the potential for what I think is a whole range of fantastic possible combinations. This is documented on our web site www.fatduck.co.uk. Snail Porrige As I mentioned in one of my other answers, my head chef Garrey had returned from a trip to New York and said that he had seen "Fish porrige" on the menu of a chinese restaurant. I realised that this actually meant congee but in the translation it sparked off the idea of snail porrige. After all, oats are not at all sweet. In this dish, the porrige is cooked very quickly to preserve the texture of the oats. An interesting side line to this is the fact that snails are also purged on oats. Basically, every dish on the menu has a reason for being and these can come from almost anywhere. Some of the stuff that we have been working on over the past year involves the brain to palate connection and how this is altered by the role of the other senses. We are and have been working on the use of sound to trick the mind into thinking that the texture in the mouth is actually different to what is perceived. I could go on for pages in answer to your questions but unfortunately I will need a lot more time and space than I have now. With regards to the "process", this can in some cases be more enlightning and enjoyable than the result itself. A couple of weeks ago, I spent a week in the labs of Firmenich, the flavour company that we work with in Geneva. This was a week designed to bring together some of the people that we work with but instead of communicating by e-mail or phone, we were together in one building. Prof. Andy Taylor, the inventor of the head space machine along with Harold McGee, Dr Kilcast from Leatherhead food research centre, Prof. Dom Motram, the Maillard reaction expert from Reading University and half a dozen other people gathered for a weeks workshop. Harold and I arrived on the Monday and were asked to give a presentaiton on the Thursday to the other delegats that were arriving then.We were basically left to our own devices and had to come up with a couple of things to be able to show them. Well, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to try an idea that I had been harbouring for over a year. Trying to make a mouthfull of food that had four flavours but not together. The idea was hat these flavours came one after another. Although fat holds flavour in the mouth for longer, the peak of flavour delivered by a fat based mix is less than that of a lower fat one made with, say milk. So, I thought, if we made four gels, each with different fat levels and with a different flavour, the most volatile being in the least fatty mix and the least volatile in the most fatty, then we would have a gel with four flavours, each coming one after another. The idea being that the least fatty gel would let go of the most volatile flavour the quickest, exploding in the mouth, as this died, the slower release of the relatively fattier second gel would then come through as the first dies away and so forth with the other two. Althoguh we ran into a load of problems in doing trying this over the course of two days, the fun and learing that Harold and I got from this was incredible. We also had a result. It worked! Not as well as it could but there was defniately enough to warrant more work. Unfortunately this will need a lot more work on it and for just one mouthfull as by the second one, some of the last flavour in the first mouthful will still be there. This was a perfect example of how the "process" was almost more enjoyable than the end result. I think that as a chef, you only put a new dish on the menu when you feel that it is ready to go on. The trouble is that when the dish is so new that it may not have anything to compare with, the customers perception is quite different from the chefs. Sometimes it is just a case of perception and other times it is the fact that until you start repetatively serving a dish, you do not know how to improve it or indeed consider that it might need improving at all. There is also the probelm of whether the diners pleasure is being sacrificed because of the chefs innovation or the diners level of palatability or acceptability. Again we come back to the issue of what is acceptable to one person may not be at all acceptable to another. Sorry, I did not quite understand your last point but although I have only really scratched the surface, I have to stop somewhere. See you

I totally agree with you; Molecular gastronomy does not make itself sound like the most user-friendly approach to cooking but I think that this is largely to do with he fact that it is still, to a certain extent a new term. With continued work on this subject and more stuff about it in print, I hope that that this barrier will begin to disappear. Over the last couple of years, I have thought heavily about this and cannot come up with a better description that is as short as this. This does not cover the whole aspect of my cooking. It is still founded on classical French cuisine but the real drive for me is the psychology of flavour and perception of taste. So, I need to come up with a description that combines these three things; Any suggestions?

Not at all. In general, I was happy with the series as it did not try and trivialise this approach to cooking. There were a few points that I did not entirely agree with and one of them was relating to descriptions of dishes in this manner. I had however resisted so many things that if these were to stay, well there could have been worse things left in! The word perfect does definately suggest that it cannot be improved. I do not think for one minute that this is so. It is however, when the temperatures are stuck to rigorously, the best method that I have come accross of making mash potato. One thing that should be said though is that with bad ingredients, do not expect good results. This method will still not help the wrong type of potato or second rate butter to make a great puree

I think that it would have to be Michel Bras, I have known him for nearly fifteen years and am still perplexed as to why it took the Michelin guide some twelve years to move him from two to three stars. I have spoken to Michel on several occasions and one of the great things about him is that he is so oblivious to what is going on outside of his region. What I also love about this restaurant is the relaxed nature of the service. I dont know if it is because I have been going there for years but I cannot think of another three star restaurant where my wife and I can go with our three children and feel so relaxed-almost at home!

Thanks, there have been some great questions. I really don't read that many cookbooks now. I used to, with a vengance. I have somethingn the region of six hundred cookbooks but the ones that fascinate me at the moment are Food,the science of its components by Dr Tom Coultate, The mind and emotion by Prof. Ed Rolls and I loved reading The man who thought his wife was a hat by Oliver Sacks. This last book is a collection of case studies of people who have lost their sixth sense or the sense of propreoception. This is, in effect our on board computer and what pulls our whole functional system together. Current work on the perception of flavour is focusing on this sense and this is one area that I am fascinated in. I am also really interested in historical recipes. The Vivendier, the recipes from Taillevent, the chef to the Palais Royal in Paris in the 13th Century makes fascinating reading as in it he serves dishes that "trick" the palate. It really is amazing just how many things in cooking have been around in some shape or form for hundreds of years. I also try and stay up to date with the publication of research papers on anything that I think could be relavent.

Marco and I have been friends for years (about 19 to be precise!) and we still speak on a regular basis. He gave me great support when I was opening The Fat Duck and I wont forget that. His generosity is second to none. When people like Marco go through some apparently "tricky" times I think that some of the press would like you to think that the situation seems a lot worse than it is in reality. After all, Marco has achieved so much in his career and hes not about to stop yet!

Although we have not really got involved in depth in this area as yet, I am a great fan of Patricia at Le Fromagerie and we have talked about doing various projects together. Although nothing has come to fruition, she is very interested in molecular gastronomy and I am sure that we will do some interesting work on this in the future

The whole thing basically started with the kitchen itself. Whilst I had read Harolds brilliant book On food and cooking some ten years before opening the restaurant and had gained a good base knowledge of some kitchen chemistry, I had not really started to experiment or challenge any techniques. Harolds book however did make a statement that really did make me think. He said that browning meat did not seal in the juices. This was the first thing that I had ever read that challenged a completely accepted kitchen lore. When we opened The Fat Duck in August 1995, we took over an old pub and re-decorated on a budget. We did very little to the kitchen apart from investing in a couple of pieces of second hand catering equipment like a fridge and an oven. THe biggest problem with the kitchern was that it had domestic gas pressure feed through a half inch pipe. We could not get this extended to begin with because of cost and disruption. You may be wondering what an earth all of this has got to do with the science of cooking? Well, the answer is, quite a lot actually! When cooking green vegetables, kitchen lore states that you need to bring a large pan of generously salted water to the boil-in some instances this is ridiculously described as a strong or rolling boil. Water will either boil or not! The reason for maintaining a large quantity of water at boiling is that when a relatively small amount of green beans are thrown in, the cold mass of bean will not bring the water off of the boil. This, along with the addition of salt meant that the green veg would retain its colour. With our low gas pressure we could only maintain a few litres of water at boiling point. This meant that any more than a handfull of cold beans added would bring the water off of the boil . We therefore had to cook literally eight green beans at a time! Because of this, I needed to learn exactly why the salt and boiling water played such an important role in cooking green veg? Most books that talked about the addition of salt said that it helped "fix" the colour. This meant nothing to me as it did not explain what was happening. Certainly the salt did nothing for the seasoning of the veg as they needed seasoning again before serving. I then decided to test the theory that salt raises the boiling temp of the water and found that the difference really was miniscule. I then decided to cook some brocolli at home in unsalted tap water. I cooked the florets until very soft and noticed that they were still vibrant green. Coming to terms with the fact that salt is not necessary in cooking water to retain the green colour in veg is pretty difficult for a chef; after all, this is one of the moast biblical lores in the kitchen! I then decided that after some ten years of this, I needed to find a scientist that was interested in cooking and working with a chef; after all, we are not the easiest people to work with! I had allready been in contact with Harold McGee but he was based in the States. I had also spoken to Herve This, the french chemist with a degree in molecular gastronomy and good friend of Pierre Gagnaire but again he was not based in the Uk. Although over the past five years, I was buildiing up a friendship with these chaps, I still needed to find a scientist with whome we could physically work together. Having known of the work of Nicholas Kurti, Physicist at Oxford University, I tried to contact him only to find out that he had died a couple of months before (this was about three years ago). Prof Kurti was the leading light on the science of cooking and his wife told me of the workshop in Sicily every two years on molecular gastronomy. She kindly sent me a list of the participants. I then telephoned my way through the names on thiis list until I got hold of Peter Barham, physicist at BristolUniversity and author (although he wasnt then) of the book The science of cooking. I told him that I had come to the conclusion that salt was not needed to keep the green colour in veg while cooking-after all we make an etouffee of, say leek by cooking them in a water butter emulsion with no more salt added than is necessary for the seasoning. If this emulsion was salted at the same rate as traditional blanching water, the leeks would be inedible but with this relatively low salt added , as long as the leeks are not overcooked they will retain their colour. So here we have a case of classical cookery contradicting itself! Pete and I subsequently met up and it all went from there. During the past three years, I have built up a network of friends in the science world ranging from a Prof of flavour technology in Nottingham University to a proff. of flavour psychology in Oxford who has isolated neurons that have responded to specific flavours. There is the Dr at the Leatherheard food research centre and the Proff at Reading Uni who is one of the leading lights on the browning flavours and reactions in meat cookery A couple of weeks a ago we all spent a week along with Harold in labs in Geneva experimenting-it was fantastic. There is a lot more to this story Andy but I cant keep on typing-sorry! Suffice to say that a lot of the work that we are doing at the moment is on flavour psychology and is just so fascinating

Hello Lisa, I have made a six part television series screened on the Discovery channel. Although the series was screened last month, there are plans to show it again before christmas. It was called Kitchen chemistry and covered many elements of the science of cooking and psychology of flavour. We took over a kitchen in a house about two hundred metres from the restaurant. We filmed from about 8am to 12pm when I popped back to the restaurant for an hour to check on the lunch service and then filmed again from about 1.30pmto 6.30pm when I finished to cover evening service. It was pretty hard work but it was putting important information accross to the general public so it was an important thing to do.

Doug, I think that it is possible to be a vegetarian and a gourmet although I do think that by sticking to just vegetables, with no use of meat or fish whatsoever is starving the palate of many pleasures. The biggest downside for me from being a vegetarian is the whoeful quality of some of the fruit and veg available to us in this country. Why should we have to pay more money for tomatoes grown especially for flavour? Why is it so hard to find carrots that actually taste of carrot? How can one buy peaches from a roadside market stall near Nimes that are or so fragrantly flavoured and ripe yet we are asked to pay four times the price for un-ripe relatives in this country? We have eventually managed to organise a range of fruit and vegetables to be grown for us by the late Roald Dahls' wife, Felicity. She came for dinner the first time a couple of years or so ago. we have since become friends. She kindly offered us the services of her gardeners and the use of her vegetable garden as, she said, Roald would have wanted it to be put to good use. Unfortunately we will not benefit from the fruits of this for another year yet. I do think however that to create truly great food with vegetables, the quality and the freshness of the vegetable itself is be paramount. I f the freshness and quality is there than the dish is easy to create; without this, it does become difficult to turn out gastronomic food with substandard ingredients.

This is a major problem in all kitchens, I just think that in ours it takes around three months for most chefs to get a grip of the kitchen. Not only the techniques and some of the equipment but to come to terms with the size of the kitchen itself; it really is tiny! I think however, that a bigger problem for us- possibly easing a little now- is the fact that many young chefs feel too intimidated to come and work at The Fat Duck. This was because there was an image amongst chefs that the kitchen is more like a science lab and that it is full of men in white coats (I don't mean chefs jackets). Although we do use quite a bit of lab equipment, the kitchen is still essentially a kitchen.

Gavin, Its a pleasure to answer your questions, I just wished that I could type a little faster! I personally don't believe in screaming and shouting in the kitchen. I have a fantastic team of eleven chefs that work for me. They are all extrememly hard working and dedicated and love what they do. I try and drive home the point that why spend so many hours taking care in the preparation and then try and send something out of the kitchen that is just sub-standard. I would much rather a chef realised that he messed up and also admitted it. Even if it means re-doing a table. Obviously I wont be over the moon but I would be far happier than if elements of a dish come up to the pass that are sub-standard. Likewise I take the same attitude with the front of house staff. I would prefer that they brought a dish back to the kitchen that had, for example been knocked over rather than take it to the table! Also I rekon that if the kitchen is relaxed, so to will the front of house be. This is particularly important with the food at The Fat Duck. I do realise that, to some people in particular, the menu can seem a little daunting, even a practicle joke. This couldnt be further from the truth but how do I explain this to the customer without risking being condescending or sounding pretentious; something that is so far removed from my personality. Because of this, the front of house team have an even harder job on there hands; they have to try and make the customer as relaxed as possible from the moment that they walk into the building. How can they be relaxed with a chef screaming at them in the background?

Some of the techniques used at The Fat Duck are also involved in the cooking at The Brasserie, notably the low temperature cooking and a little bit of flavour encapsulation. There were three reasons for opening a Brasserie; !/ To eventually be profit-making enough to be able to support The Fat Duck and help it grow to the level that I want it to get to 2/ To have a restaurant cooking food that is designed more for the purpose of satisfying a hunger and tasting good than food that sets out ot challenge and thus appeals to a narrower band of people. The Fat Duck is not designed to eat at on a regular basis whereas the brasserie is. 3/ To show that the scientific approach can also be adapted to any kind of cooking Although both restaurants are still developing, I plan to keep quite a large gap between the two in terms of cooking style and service

We have a great relationship with Michel, Alain and many of the rest of the Waterside staff. During the first couple of years, The waterside Inn kindly gave us quite a bit of business almost as an overflow restaurant! In terms of professional dialogue, although we share a coffee and enjoy the social element, the dialogue does not really run to deep in terms of cooking-perhaps we are too far apart in terms of food for this! This gap however has meant that a lot of our customers are also Waterside regulars as the two restaurants really dont compete with each other. To begin with, I don't think that The Fat Duck is or was ever out to challenge the Waterside Inn. The Roux brothers have done as much, possibly more than anyone for the developement of British gastronomy and The Fat Duck is not about to challenge that. I dont really feel that there is a sense of competition and if there is, well lets say it is just a little friendly one!

Mathew, Sure, if you rekon that you can stand in what amounts to a shoe box (allbeight a relaxed one) give us a call. Speak to myself or my head chef, Garrey

I think that Gordons food in Chelsea is very precise and consistent. The whole operation runs like clockwork now. Whatever you may think of some of his past "behaviour", he has managed to mantain quality and consistency and have a three michelin starred restaurant that does not require him to be there every minute of the day meaning that he can get on with building a business. I know that this may sound a little bit like a polotician talking but as far as I am concerned, you cannot fault the restaurant. It is because of this amongst other things, that Gordon is not about to take risks. The point that he is at now in his career means that he has far much more to loose than to gain by any drastic change in cooking styles. Unfortunately, I don't go out to eat anywhere near as much as I used to. I think that I have been out to eat somethree or four times this year. Regarding any "speacial attention" that I may get, I think that It depends on whose restaurant I am in. If it is a friend then It is quite easy for me to say how much food I want to eat. If I receive extra dishes, I quite enjoy it partly because of the surprise element. I also tend to put myself in the chefs position and if it was a friend or professional acquaintance of mine coming to The Fat Duck, then I would want to know and send something extra.

Hello Wilfrid I believe that food and cooking should exist in any shape or form. At any time in history, modern and classical food will exist. Some of what is modern becomes classical and in turn, some classical cooking becomes modern. I think that, as a chef you spend many years of your life desperately trying to improve what you do. It does not matter whether the food is modern, classical, modernised classical or classically modernised it can allways be improved; I hesitate to say perfected as I think that this is a goal that is almost unachievavble. Many an inspiration can come from cooking that is hundreds of years old, so jumping out of the nineteenth century may not necessarily be the best option!

I think that more often than not, the formation of a dish is intellectually driven but without doubt, it's sensory qualities must be the driving force for the dish itself. It does not matter how clever or technical a dish is, it must taste great. The really grey area is what tastes great to one person may and will not necessarily taste great to another...this is fo rme the most fascinating area of all

This is a vey good point and one that we have been looking at closely. A comment that some of our regular customers make is that their level of enjoyment actually increases with each visit! I dont mean to sound conceited by saying this but It did get me thinking. Much of the work on the psychology of flavour being done at the moment is on flavour memory. Like all other memory systems, the current theory is that our memory exists in "attractor" states. These are effectively comfort zones where we can pigeon hole things. So, a smell could be great or awful, depending on what attractor state it fell in to. Was it a nice memory or a bad one? Relating this to food, indeed a customer may not want to return to The Fat Duck too often as the sense of surprise may, too a certain extent be lost but it could be replaced by the fact that the next time a dish is eaten, the flavour memory has formed new attractor states and could pigeon hole some of these dishes into a comfort zone meaning that a different sort of pleasure could be gained from eating them I myself could not think of replicating The Fat Duck as this type of cooking needs so much fine tuning it would be almost impossible to replicate. I do think however, that the science of cooking approach and even, to a certain extent, the psychology of flavour can be adapted to any style of cooking, be it modern, classical or home cooking.

Hello Samantha Thats a good question! I find that sometimes a new dish will take a while to get going in terms of sales but if I really believe in it, I will persevere. In these instances, for some reason the dish then picks up in popularity. Sometimes however, ther is no rhyme nor reason to what makes a dish sell or not. We have been serving a hot chocolate dessert combining it with blue cheese, a fromage blanc ice cream and peaches. The chcocolate and blue cheese combination is made quite clear on the menu. Because of the peach season ending, we have changed the dessert-keeping the hot chocolate and blue cheese cake but pairing it with an Harissa ice cream and a dried apricot and orange flower water puree. Thinking that many paople will not know what Harissa is and knowing the fact that because the ice cream and the puree killed the taste of the blue cheese in the chocolate, we left the blue cheese out Because of the fact that the dessert now read without the blue cheese, i thought that it would sell like hot cakes! No chance-the first couple of days that we have hade this dessert on the menu, it has sold very little. Give it a couple of weeks though and it will definately pick up

Hello again, We first served this dish about two and a half years ago. It stemmed when trying to make pate des fruits, the classical fruit jellies traditionally served in gastronomic restaurants. We had allready made a carrot one and the beetroot one that we still serve today. I decided to try a red cabbage one but once the juice was boiled down, it was quite unpleasant. Tasting the juice of red cabbage however, I thought that this could form the basisi of a dish...this was about three and a half years ago. I then learnt that the thing that gave red cabbage its peppered effect was mustard oil. We had been doing a lot of work on ice creams at the time and in particular, savoury ones. Mustard ice cream is not new. Marc Meneau used to make one as did Alain Passard but the oldest recipe that I found was from an English woman. Mrs Marshall was the first person to make an edible ice cream cone and she made ice cream with liquid nitrogen-in 1875! So this dish was born. Th egaspacho was thickened with a mayo with a good dosage of mustard in it as well

Hello Cabrales, Thats a very good question. I love eggs but find it very difficult to get on with them in the kitchen (apart from desserts). I think that the reason is because of their interfernce with wine. The yolk particularly is very antagonistic. It coats the mouth and really accentuates acid. This as you can imagine is a dreadfull asset to a potential wine pairing. Having said that however, I have had some fantastic egg dishes in restaurants They have in general contained truffles! Like the soft boiled truffled egg at L'Ambroisie in Paris or the egg yolk served in the shell with a little whipped cream, chives and maple syrup at L'Arpege in Paris We have been doing some interesting experiments with eggs-none of which are on the menu....yet! We injected a raw egg yolk-through the shell with essential oil oof smoked bacon- and then soft-boiled it. Bacon and eggs in the egg itself! We have also tried sucking out the soft yolk from a boiled egg and injecting it with a sauce-something that we are still working on but I tohught that we could serve, instead of eggs in red wine, red wine in egg! The subject of menu speak is a very intersting one. The snail porrige idea stemmed from a visit to New York by my head chef Garrey Dawson. On his return, he told me that he had been in a chinese restaurant and seen fish porrige on the menu. Although I realised that this actually meant fish "congee" and not porrige, we were working with snails at the time and it got me thinking. Porrige is savoury and not sweet, in addition to this, snals are purged over oats. The porrige neede to be only just cooked so that it would have almost a slight chalkiness in the centre-much like a risotto This was then the inspiration for the dish. I then thought long and hard about the wording and although I realised that snail porrige does not sound the most appetising of dishes, it was exactly that, snail porrige! In terms of flavour combinations, we do "live" with some of the ideas for quite some time before putting them on the menu. I think that this is quite important as only then can you start to draw a line between something that is ready to go on the menu and something that is not. I spent a couple of days in the labs of a flavour company that we have been working with in Geneva. Walking past the gel lab I noticed that the sign at the side of the entrance said "Laboratory for edible soft matter"... I did think, only for a second or two, that this could be an interesting term on the menu but then decided that I needed to draw the line somewhere!

Yvonne, I think that without doubt, Ferran Adria will be regarded as one of the moast influencial chefs of recent years and indeed there have been elements of my cooking that have been influenced by him. To be honest though, for the first time in the seven years that I have been cooking professionally, I can now see a pattern forming that will shape my cooking and allow it to become completely individual. Interestingly enough, we are about to embark on a three year EEC funded project called INNICON. There are seven participants in this project including four restaurants. El Bulli is one of the other restaurants involved. The idea is to work together and along with an engineering company, a flavour company and cookery school, come up with new ingredients and techniques that will save time in the kitchen and hopefully improve the quality of our cooking.

Dear Suzanne I completely agree with you. The terminology self taught was not something that I came up with. Indeed my education was invaluable but was not gained during an apprenticeship in the kitchen. Eating in restaurants, meeting with farmers and winemakers, reading books and many other things have help to forge my gastronomic education. Indeed if you take wine, for example. It does not matter how amazing your palate may be, unless it has had training it will not appreciate some of the more subtle complexities in a wine. Knowledge is essential to all of this and we eat with our ears, eyes nose, mouth and brain. THe more that we can feed all of these parts of our body, the better