Heston Blumenthal

I have been watching Heston Blumenthal on the BBC Food channel for the last few weeks "in search of perfection" and the he has amazed me with his astonishing attention to detail. When he says perfection, he really means it.

A couple of weeks ago he set out to make the perfect pizza and determined from a visit to a pizzeria in Naples that the pizza had to cook in 90 seconds meaning that the oven had to be at approximately 500 degrees. The only was he could achieve this in a domestic kitchen was to cook the pizza on the base of a grill pan under the grill, both of which had to have been on full for at least 20 minutes!

This week he turned to another of my favourite things: Fish and chips. The chips were cooked and dried out in the fridge twice before their final cooking and the quest to find the best batter recipe was lengthy and complex. In the end he created this recipe:

• 200g plain flour
• 200g Doves Farm white rice flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp honey
• 300ml vodka
• 300ml lager (Kronenbourg 1664 works well)
• 2-3 litres groundnut (peanut) oil
• 4 large turbot fillets, 2–3cm thick
• Table salt and freshly ground black pepper

Then challenge was to get enough moisture out of it and as much air as possible during the cooking. The honey adds colour, the vodka evaporates very quickly making ti dry and crisp, the beer adds flavour, colour and importantly carbon dioxide. He actually puts the batter in a soda siphon to add as much carbon dioxide as possible before the final frying. The final touch to the dish was the vinegar from a jar of pickled onions that he put into an atomiser to either spray onto the chips as you eat them or just to spray into the air as "essence of fish and chip shop" as he called it.

The lengths he goes to to, the amount of trial and error involved in order to achieve perfection really amaze me, I'd love to experience his cooking in person and eat in his restaurant The Fat Duck

At least the fish mongers at Reersø should now be open for our good local fish.