In Search of Total Perfection

Book excerpt: Heston Blumenthal has made his name creating such original dishes as Snail Porridge and Nitrogen Scrambled Egg & Bacon Ice Cream at his internationally acclaimed restaurant, The Fat Duck. In this book, a single-volume edition of the bestselling Perfection books, Heston focuses his creative talent on reinventing some of our most well-known (and most abused) dishes. He travels around the world in search of definitive versions of sixteen classic dishes: Roast Chicken & Roast Potatoes, Pizza, Hamburger,Bangers & Mash, Fish Pie, Steak, Spaghetti Bolognese, Risotto, Fish & Chips, Chilli Con Carne, Chicken Tikka Masala, Peking duck, Black Forest Gateau, Treacle Tart & Ice Cream, Trifle and Baked Alaska. Among the many adventures on his quest, he travels to Delhi and makes an MRI scan of the marinated chicken in his Tikki Masala; he discovers the secret to the ultimate crispy duck in Peking and experiments at home by inflating a Gressingham on a foot pump; he walks the Dickensian streets of Lambeth and learns how to capture the essence of a fish and chip shop in a perfume bottle, and he explores the Willy Wonka-esque Tate & Lyle factory and tastes some seventy-year-old syrup that proves an inspiration for the flavour of his treacle tart. Total Perfection is an original, inspiring and fascinating voyage around the culinary globe.