Heston Marc Blumenthal (Chef) My Idol :)

Heston Marc Blumenthal OBE (born 27 May 1966 in London, raised in Buckinghamshire)^[1] is the bald bespectacled chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009, and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005.^[2] His restaurant has been a perennial runner-up to Ferran Adrià of El Bulli in the world rankings, achieving 2nd place in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, and 3rd in 2010.^[3] Blumenthal (pronounced /ˈbluːmənθɔːl/)^[4] is famous for his scientific approach and has been described as a culinary alchemist for his innovative style of cooking.

An Experimental Education

It took more than a decade to realise this dream. By day he worked in a variety of jobs – photocopier salesman, debt collector, credit controller – while at night he worked his way through the classical repertoire of French cuisine, cooking the same dishes over and over, perfecting the techniques and seeking out the best ways to harness flavour. Every summer he spent two weeks crisscrossing France, visiting restaurants, suppliers and wine estates, learning about every aspect of gastronomy and banking flavour memories for the future. This formed Heston’s culinary apprenticeship. Apart from three weeks in a couple of professional kitchens, he is entirely self-taught.

After four years of reading, cooking and researching, however, he bought a book that made him look at cooking in a completely different way. During a discussion of meat’s physical properties, it declared:

We do know for a fact that searing does not seal…

The book was On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. It encouraged Heston's natural curiosity, showing him the benefits of taking nothing for granted and using a scientific approach to cooking.  For if the notion that searing = sealing was untrue, despite being presented as fact in countless cookbooks and TV shows, then how many other ‘rules’ of the kitchen could be bent, broken or ignored? From then on, the precise questioning and testing of culinary ideas became a key part of his approach, alongside the more traditional kitchen skills.