Heston Blumenthal
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010
BBC
4.4 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2006
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the chef Heston Blumenthal. He is one of only three chefs working in Britain today to be awarded three Michelin stars and last year his restaurant, The Fat Duck, was named the best in the world by a panel of 5,000 food experts.
His speedy rise to the top of his profession is little short of extraordinary. He has only ever spent a week in a professional kitchen and taught himself classical French cookery. He became fascinated by the science of cooking and has become the Willy Wonka of modern cuisine - dishes he's created include mango and douglas fir puree, salmon poached with liquorice and, most famously, snail porridge. But he acknowledges his success has been largely due too to his wife's support and now wants to change the balance of his life towards spending more time with his young family.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Love has Finally Come at Last by Bobby Womack Book: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee Luxury: Japanese knives
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.4 | My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:10.7 | The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that. |
| 0:17.4 | With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to helping |
| 0:22.7 | you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put together |
| 0:28.7 | by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life, |
| 0:34.9 | check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:41.8 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:45.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2006. |
| 1:09.1 | Music My castaway this week is the three Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal. |
| 1:11.9 | He's one of only three chefs in Britain to hold that ultimate culinary accolade. An achievement made all the more astonishing, given that he taught |
| 1:16.6 | himself to cook at home and had only ever spent one week working in a professional kitchen |
| 1:21.3 | before opening his own restaurant. Last year, that restaurant, the fat duck, was named the |
| 1:26.1 | best in the world by an international panel of 500 experts. |
| 1:30.5 | His approach to food is, to say the least, unconventional, a sort of willy wonka of contemporary cuisine. |
| 1:36.6 | He astonishes his diners with fanciful menus of sardines-on-toast sorbet and the now legendary snail porridge. |
| 1:43.8 | It's the science of food that really gets him going. |
| 1:47.1 | And his particular approach, dubbed molecular gastronomy, |
| 1:50.4 | means he spends almost as much time with test tubes and pipettes |
| 1:53.6 | as he does slaving over a hot stove. |
| 1:56.9 | So Heston Blumenthal, those three Michelin stars, |
| 1:59.8 | the highest conventional recognition for a very unconventional chef. |
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