Heston Blumenthal has made his name creating such original dishes as Snail Porridge and Nitrogen Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream at his internationally acclaimed restaurant, The Fat Duck. In this book, Heston focuses his creative talent on reinventing some of our most well-known (and most abused) dishes.
He travels around the world in search of definitive versions of sixteen classic dishes: Roast Chicken and Roast Potatoes, Pizza, Hamburger, Bangers and Mash, Fish Pie, Steak, Spaghetti Bolognese, Risotto, Fish and Chips, Chilli Con Carne, Chicken Tikka Masala, Peking duck, Black Forest Gateau, Treacle Tart and Ice Cream, Trifle and Baked Alaska.
Among the many adventures on his quest, he travels to Delhi and makes an MRI scan of the marinated chicken in his Tikki Masala; he discovers the secret to the ultimate crispy duck in Peking and experiments at home by inflating a Gressingham on a footpump; he walks the Dickensian streets of Lambeth and learns how to capture the essence of a fish and chip shop in a perfume bottle, and he explores the Willy Wonka-esque Tate and Lyle factory and tastes some seventy-year-old syrup that proves an inspiration for the flavour of his treacle tart.
In Search of Total Perfection is an original, inspiring and fascinating voyage around the culinary globe.