Your first book

[Andy Lynes]

Heston, I was surprised when I learnt that your first book was on the subject of cooking at home for a young family. Can you tell us a bit about how the idea developed.

Will you eventually do a book of your restaurant food in the manner we have come to expect from Michelin starred chefs?

[Heston Blumenthal]

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!