"fat duck" news and stories

Known for his cutting edge experiments, er, cooking at one of the world's top restaurants, The Fat Duck, chef Heston Blumenthal is not a man to shy away from a challenge. When he bought a pub, the Hinds Head, he thought he would have to leave his chemistry set in the car and cook more traditional pub fare. While some of the dishes are quite ordinary, what the diners didn't realize is that Blumenthal has a more unusual definition of "tradition" than most.

Instead of simply looking for classic favorites to serve at his pub, like fish and chips, he looked through medieval cookbooks as a jumping off place. Dishes like "quaking pudding" from the 15th century were cooked up, along with "chocolate wine" from the early 1700s. The most disturbing recipe, which seems to be what engouraged his curiosity for the old-fashioned cooking, is as follows, recounted by Blumenthal:

Source

The Wall Street Journal is speculating about the future of flavor. As flavors that were uncommon 10 years ago - and virtually unheard of before that - are now in mainstream venues like fast food restaurants and packages of potato chips, chefs are now looking beyond these flavors to find the next hot item for their menus. In some cases, chefs are even turning away from the "natural" trends so popular right now and using artificial (chemical) flavorings to bring out unusual sensations, like the menthol crystals that Wylie Dufresne uses in a raw fish dish at wd-50 and the flavorings of oak, pine and leather that Heston Blumenthal incorporates at The Fat Duck. While menthol crystals are unlikely to appear in your local market, ready to be sprinkled on your sashimi, WSJ speculates that it could be one of these ten flavors to make it to the big time: Thai basil, tamarind, musk, shiso, pomegranate, guava, leather, pine, florals and/or molé.

Personally, I'm skeptical about musk because it is a relatively common flavor in other countries that has not proved to be popular in the US to date. I know that I am not a fan of it at all. But I must say that leather flavoring seems just a bit less likely even than musk....

But you won't be able to click over and surf through his archives just yet.

The chef of Fat Duck in Britain is putting his research, notes, recipes and photographs online, using a wiki-style system. He and his two sets of staff do "research" and "experiments" in their kitchen laboratory, which Blumenthal would like to keep for posterity. He agrees with Ferran Adria of El Bulli in Spain, who told him that "they were trying to log information, because you are involved in something that is changing the face of gastronomy."

Eventually, he says he would leave the archives to the country. Perhaps a library. For now, only Blumenthal and his staff will be able to access the online files with varying levels of security.

Decanter has the ultimate food pairing. But the duck is the restaurant not the food.

The three Michelin starred restaurant, the Fat Duck in Berkshire, UK, played host to one of those food and wine matching events that only the ultra privileged seem to get to (moi, jealous?). The meal was in celebration of the release of the £220 a bottle Dom Perignon Rosé.  Apparently some matches were not hugely successful with the 1996 vintage deadened by the oyster and passion fruit (oh, shame), and "several diners said they would have given anything for a glass of pinot noir with the pigeon"; its a hard life... 

However the star of the evening was the 1978 - which some smart-alec thought had a touch of liquorice to the flavour matched with snail porridge, bacon and egg ice cream, and salmon in liquorice

So next time you fancy a slurp on your Dom Perignon '78 of a Thursday evening you know what to throw in the microwave.