25. Jelly of Oyster and Passion Fruit with Lavender

Jelly of Oyster and Passion Fruit with Lavender
Specialty Equipment: digital thermometer
Specialty Ingredients: isomalt, gelatine 170 Bloom
Days: 1
Dish as in The Fat Duck:

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Using a short, wide-bladed knife, carefully open each oyster, transferring them and their liquid to a container. Discard the top shells of the oysters, but scrub clean and boil the bottom shells to sterilize them. Reserve for serving the oysters. Strain the oysters, reserving the liquid, and place them on absorbent kitchen paper. Pick them clean of any pieces of shell. Pass the oyster juice through a fine sieve into a clean container. Rinse the oysters in the strained juice to remove any remaining debris, then place them on fresh kitchen paper. Strain the oyster juice again through a double layer of damp muslin and set aside. Using a sharp knife, trim off any dark flesh around the edges of the oysters and any bits of the adductor muscle (the part that attached it to the shell). Cover and set aside in the fridge.

OR

Open the oysters, clean them and reserve. Keep the bottom shell and the juice.

The long description is of course the one from the cookbook and the other a description you would find in other cookbooks. The recipes may put the fear of god into you, but they are so detailed and precise it guides you through every step. I’ve really come to appreciate the work that went into the book, and the attention to detail. It takes you by the hand and doesn’t let go. The thing that makes me crazy from time to time, is at times the only thing keeping me sane.

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24. Pine Sherbet Fountain & Mango and Douglas Fir Puree

Pine Sherbet Fountain ‘Pre-Hit’ & Mango and Douglas Fir Puree, Bavarois of Lychee and Mango, Blackcurrant Sorbet, Blackcurrant and Green Peppercorn Jelly
Specialty Equipment: dehydrator, ice cream machine
Specialty Ingredients: gellan F, sodium citrate, gelatine 170 Bloom, tartaric acid, Douglas fir essential oil, lychee essential oil, pine Flexarome®
Days: 1
Dish as in The Fat Duck:

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I tried. I did. But obtaining pine Flexarome® is impossible. I might just have well walked in the garden of my neighbours and started digging away in the hope of some gold. My pursuit of the stuff started with an e-mail to Firmenich, the company that sells it to The Fat Duck. I got a very polite response with an invitation to discuss my request on the phone. I called them and talked for some time, at which point I was told Firmenich is strictly business to business and only sends out products to registered clients. In a last attempt I told I made a deal with CP Kelco some time ago to get samples and asked if there was any way I could make a similar arrangement. Unfortunately the answer was a two letter word. The reason is Firmenich sells specialised products for particular needs instead of standardised stuff like CP Kelco, resulting in lots of paper work when processing products and no way to just send something out. My second attempt of obtaining the Flexarome was The Fat Duck. My request, to keep it short, was not fulfilled.

Damn. I hate it when I have to start a recipe without a particular ingredient. Luckily I could find all the other ingredients and found a solution for the missing Flexarome, but more on that later. Taking centre stage of the dessert are a mango & lychee mousse and a scoop of blackcurrant sorbet. Obtaining blackcurrants and lychee puree required me jumping through a whole field of hoops. All the stores I visited offered a range of frozen fruits, but never blackcurrants. The same goes for the lychee purée. After a long search I found a store, which sold both and I was ready to start. A note, the recipe asks for mango and lychee puree. You could blitz fresh fruit, what I did with mangos, but the recipe states purees specifically, so I went for the fruit purees of Boiron.

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23. Roast Turbot

Roast Turbot, Mussels, Artichokes and Jelly of Verjus, Turbot and Langoustine Royale, Velouté of Button Mushrooms
Specialty Equipment: water bath, digital thermometer, vacuum machine, thermomix, pressure cooker
Specialty Ingredients: gellan F, gellan LT100, gelatine 170 Bloom, transglutaminase, vitamin C, sodium citrate
Days: 1
Dish as in The Fat Duck:

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Reading the introduction to this recipe it’s clear this dish is a celebration of much loved ingredients by Mr. Blumenthal. There are paragraphs on mussels, button mushrooms and turbot. Although not my top favorite ingredients, I do love these three. Button mushrooms in particular, slowly cooked in butter until caramelized are incredible. Ceps may have, for me, the slight edge on button mushrooms, but I do agree with Heston that these humble mushrooms are underrated.

As clear as the introduction is, so confusing is the stuff that follows. Just like the dried onion rectangle from the Sole Veronique, I had a hard time figuring out how the hell this fish course is composed. The pictures in combination with all the components of the recipe were difficult to decipher and only when making it I could figure out what the photos in the book represented.

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22. Make the Most of It…

I was shopping for the Roast Turbot dish and was thinking how expensive it can be to cook with a non-negotiable shopping list in your hand. Normally I look around what looks good and check if there are any good deals. With a list there really isn’t any room to go for the sole instead of the turbot or tiger prawns instead of langoustines. You could of course consider the recipes as a template, and make your own version of a recipe, but I’d like to stay as true as possible to the book as possible, so I put aside all my own ideas.

What adds to this situation is the diversity of ingredients. The Roast Turbot requires lots of herbs, expensive fish and shellfish, all kinds of vegetables, and many more. In a restaurant it really isn’t a problem with the ability to stretch ingredients across dozens of plates. I cook at most 4 to 5 plates and sometimes less, and often have excess ingredients. An example of another dish is the liqourice for the salmon, of which I only used 1/10.

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