Exploding cakes and glowing jelly (From Dorset Echo)

Exploding cakes and glowing jelly

9:40am Monday 9th March 2009

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Edible cutlery, exploding cakes, a glowing absinthe jelly tower and four-and-twenty blackbirds flying out of a pie. It was only going to be a matter of time until Heston Blumenthal discovered the delights of culinary ‘theatre’.

The Willy Wonka of celebrity chefs returned to our screens last Tuesday with a new TV series for Channel 4, exploring the ancient art of the banquet in all its jaw-dropping glory.

Each episode takes 42-year-old Heston on a gastronomic quest to rediscover lost recipes from Victorian and Tudor England to the medieval era and ancient Rome.

“There's an unbelievable wealth of food culture, gastronomy in Britain that we've buried and forgotten about,” he says.

“There’s a heritage there that should be celebrated.”

For the man whose signature dishes include smoked bacon and egg ice cream, snail porridge and Sounds of the Sea – a multi-sensory experience involving oysters, sea urchins and an iPod in a seashell – it’s no surprise that his inspiration for Heston’s Feasts was equally unique.

“While I was writing my first book, Family Food, I came across a manuscript from Taillevent, who was a chef to the Palais Royal in Paris in about 1300,” Heston explains.

“There was a recipe where you plucked a chicken while it was still alive, and then brushed its skin with wheat germ and saffron and dripping, and then you put the head under the belly and rocked it to sleep.

“You put it on the serving platter with two roasted chickens, and then started carving one of the roast chickens at the table. While you were carving, the chicken that was asleep would wake up and squawk and run across the table.”

The hapless bird ended up getting stuffed with mercury and sulphur, which reacted when it was cooked to produce a clucking noise.

While Heston would never repeat this medieval feat – “it’s completely immoral” – the recipe did get him thinking.

“In those days, they didn’t have cinema and televisions, computer games and stereo systems, so there was an element of theatre brought into the food.

“When I moved from the BBC to Channel 4 last year, I was asked what sort of thing I wanted to do. I think I come across best on TV when I’m genuinely excited about something and I’m really fascinated with historical recipes.

“I didn’t want it to have to be about recipes that were doable at home. I wanted it to be the kind of thing people could just relax and enjoy. So Channel 4 came back and suggested doing some historically themed programmes, we picked four periods of history, and created a feast inspired by each era.”

But Heston, who has three Michelin stars to his name, admits the banquets are not wholly faithful to the originals.

“It’s certainly not a food history programme.

“We’re not recreating feasts exactly as they were, we’re giving them a contemporary twist.

“I learned a lot, and it enabled me to try out some dishes that I’d read about over the years and wondered what it would be like to serve to people.”

• Heston’s Feasts is on tomorrow night on Channel 4 at 9pm.

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