"Self-taught"

[Suzanne F]

Do you truly believe that a cook can be entirely "self-taught?" No cookery school, fine. No previous professional kitchen experience, fine. But no reading? No eating the cooking of others? No chat with farmers, fishers, and/or other purveyors? No influence of the label on the cookware in the store? The eternal verities of technique, and the ability to taste basic flavors, may well be instinctive; but what of everything else? Are these not somehow absorbed from elsewhere (i.e., "learned")?

[Heston Blumenthal]

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