In Search Of Heston

From Heston’s Perfect spaghetti Bolognese to his much simpler spaghetti carbonara recipe.

 

 

The other week I cooked Heston’s Spaghetti Bolognese recipe ( a solid 12 hours start to finish), the first step on my quest to cook all 16 of Heston’s Perfection recipes.

 

Pasta has just been revealed as the world’s most popular food, but I bet that wouldn’t be the case if every spaghetti dish took a full day to make. The Heston spaghetti carbonara recipe takes about 30 minutes.

 

Quick, simple and most of the ingredients can be found lying around the  kitchen. Perfect for a weeknight. Your move, Jamie.

 

SUMMARY

 

Recipe: Can be found here on the Guardian website or here in the Times archives.. More detailed instructions in Heston’s recipe book Family Food.

 

Special Equipment: None

Special Ingredients: None

 

Time: About 30 minutes

Cost:  About £5. Slightly more if you use decent bacon.

Serves: 4 – 6 (depending on appetite)

Difficulty: Fairly Easy

STEP 1: The Onions and Garlic

 

A good test of your knife skills. I had to resist the temptation to whack the heat up and speed the cooking; they’re supposed to take 15 minutes.

 

Hestonthusiasts will be shocked that there’s no star anise in with the onions. Since this is kind of a 30 minute meal I copied Jamie and used a crusher for the garlic.

 

 

STEP 2: The Spaghetti

 
 

 

Heston’s tip: 10g of salt and 1 litre of water for every 100g of pasta. Naturally there’s a sciencey reason for this, basically it stops your pasta being starchy. See how cloudy the cooking water is? Starch.

 

Once it’s ready Heston says lift the pasta out of the water (with tongs I guess) to prevent it reabsorbing the starch. I’m a bit cack-handed at this, so I tend to pour the majority of the water away, then lift. Means less spaghetti clogging up the washing-up bowl.

 

Make sure the sauce is ready before your pasta is finished.

 

 

STEP 3: The “Sauce”

 

“Sauce” seems a generous way to describe the paste that you get from whisking a lot of grated parmesan together with a few egg yolks. 

 

Once you add a ladle of the starchy (and salty) pasta water it will make more sense.

Warning: don’t add the pasta water straight from the pan, it’ll scramble the egg yols and ruin your sauce. I measure the pasta salt in a remekin, then dip it in the cooking water, set it to one side to cool, then pour it in from a height.

Quick tip: make sure your bowl is large enough to slop all the cooked spaghetti around in and get a nice thick coating of the sauce. 
Have this sauce ready before your pasta is done.

 

Step 4: Bacon and chilli

 

The final ingredients don’t need long. If you finish this step early take it off the heat and it’ll stay warm in the pan.

 I should confess to using cheap supermarket bacon here. It’s not the smartest move when you’re hoping to take photos you can show off with on the internet. 

If you’ve been paying attention to Jay Rayner you know they bulk out cheap bacon with water and stabilisers. That water can leak out near th end of cooking filling your pan with slurry.

If standard bacon is all you have access to you might have to sieve this mixture before stirring it through to remove some of that water. You will lose flavour but preserve the texture of the dish.

 

STEP 5: Finishing the dish

 

I was a little worried by the raw-egg sauce. But the pasta, hot  from the pan, will cook those yolks through. No need to fret.

Warning: It’s easy to add too much water and end up with a runny sauce that slips off th spaghetti. If this happens put the lot back in the pan over the lowest possible heat until it thickens up. You want a nice gooey coating on each spaghetti strand.

 

I always envy those picture-perfect pasta dishes evenly mixed ingredients. Mine usually end up with the onions clumped at the bottom and sides. Using a pair of tongs helped me. A bit.

 

VERDICT

 

Never mind the Bolognese, this recipe is perfection in its own right. Filling yet light, unctuous and creamy without being heavy and with strong, balanced flavours. Thanks to the, parmesan salty pasta water and kick from the chilli you don’t even need to season it.

 

Easily scalable from a six-person supper down to a gastronomic treat for one. You could even make it healthier by using leaner cuts of bacon and adding more veg.

 

Heston says he prefers the dish without mushrooms. I’m nostalgic (at uni I lived off microwave versions of this) and stubborn so I put some in mine. he’s right, they really don’t work and the texture is all wrong.

 

On the subject of veg, the Times article finishes with the following quote from Blumenthal:

“I love to add peas to this dish; broccoli is also be a great extra. If you do use peas, it might be an idea to change the pasta, as the spaghetti won’t hold them”

 

…sound advice. Whichmakes the near-identical Pea and Ham Spaghetti recipe for Waitrose kinda baffling. You’ll notice nobody tries to get some on a fork in the Waitrose TV ad:

 

Quick, simple, cheap and delicious, I’ve found myself cooking this pretty often since my first attempt (there’s a lot of posh spaghetti to get through). Might use conchiglie if I add peas though.

 

And as for all the leftover egg whites? They freeze pretty well, or you could be extra efficient and make a fantastic dessert like Heston’s chocolate fondant recipe with them.

 

 

Further reading:

 

So Long & Thanks for all the fush & chups: Agrees this recipe is a winner

 

Peach Jam: A great UK blog from a fellow foodie agrees this is a great weeknight dish.

 

Gareth Jones Food: Takes the essence of this dish to the next level with some choice rare ingredients.

 

Sorted: Makes more of a meal of it, but does use cream and whole eggs.

 

Not Delia: Gives Sorted’s version above a good go.

 

 

Oh look, another food blog review of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental. Just what the internet has been crying out for.

 

If you haven’t already seem them let me highly recommend the opinions of Meemalee’s Kitchen, Sui Mai, Winkipedia, the Skinny Bib (and their invaluably comprehensive repeat visits) and, of course, The Critical Couple.

If you still want to read more about Dinner by Heston then here’s my two pence worth.

I rang the morning reservations opened last December, but booked mid-April, giving us a lazy hour in a baking-hot Hyde Park before dining (and a chance to scope out the view through the windows like Dickensian orphans). Our reservation was for 2.30pm, enough time to drive down from Manchester – we made the one-day round trip just for the meal.
 
 

First Impressions

 

Thanks to Bar Boulud most London-based restaurant bloggers will be familiar with the interior of the Mandarin Oriental. But I’m not, and there’s only vague signs for the restaurant once you enter the hotel. Huge thanks to Meemalee for saying to look for the illuminated pear sign amongst the austere gloom.

Everyone else will have told you about the Hyde Park views, glass wine cage and jelly-mould lamps. What they probably haven’t mentioned is that Dinner looks battered. Three months of popularity have left their mark, scuffs on the leather walls and dents in the table (from all those digital cameras?). Even the wooden serving platters are faded. Nothing terminal, but unexpected for a place I still consider “new”.

 

I’d read criticisms of badly trained waiters and rudeness if you don’t double your bill on the wine list. Worrying for 3 non-drinkers. In fact staff turned out to be charming and efficient at every stage.

Special mention should be made of the brilliant Maitre’d. With less than a week’s notice he was able to turn our 2 person booking into a table for 3. Given the clamour for seats fitting an extra person in had to be tough, as political as it was logistical.
 
 

The Menu

 

I know Heston’s Dinner menu better than most exams I’ve sat.. Spot -test me on Twitter if you need proof. And I’ve read so many blog reviews that I see the dishes when I close my eyes, like when you play too much Tetris. I bet most foodies with a reservation have probably done the same and know what they’ll order before even walking in (Meat Fruit, Beef Royale, Tipsy Cake).

Actually Beef Royale was off the menu. Seems around 50% of diners are ordering it and the kitchens can’t keep up with that volume without sacrificing quality. This turned out to be a good thing.
 
 

Drinks

 

To avoid the alleged 2^nd Class Citizen treatment we got stuck in to the non-alcoholic cocktail menu. (Left to right) Sunrise, warm and delicious. Green Goblin, the favourite. Red Cucumber, clean, refreshing and summery. 
 
 

Food

I really wanted a set lunch to go alongside our a la cartes, but got outvoted in favour of four starters, two rounds of desserts and more triple cooked chips than was sensible.
 
 

Starters

 

Scallops with Cucumber Ketchup (£16.00)

 

Illustrates how Heston and Ashley are maximising the impact of their ingredients. Searing the cucumber produces a range of flavours, added to by the borage (thanks Wikipedia). Cubed pieces in the sauce give more texture. Light, summery and balanced.
 
 

Savoury Porridge (£13.50)

 

“It tastes like cup-a-soup!” was the first comment I heard. I sent my own fork out to bring back a sample for further testing. The verdict? It does, sort of. There’s a similar complex savouriness, but due to skill and techniques, not salt and additives. Intensely tasty.

Dense, flavoursome cod cheeks will be familiar to fans of the Mission Impossible series (Royal Navy episode). I think there’s even a bit of tongue and soft palette in there. Quite different to the porridge dish at the Fat Duck.
 
 

Rice & Flesh (£14.00)

 

Saffron risotto with wonderful creamy, gooey texture and al dente rice. Calorifically creamy and starchy, but not overwhelming. Everyone is right though, you need more calf’s tail.       
 
 

M**t F***t (£12.50)

 

Blah blah blah. Ok, 3 things:

1. Unless you only eat plastic display fruit you won’t be deceived into thinking it’s a real mandarin orange. Very cute though.
2. c1500? More like c1970’s Duck a l’Orange! Anyone remember that bit in Heston’s 1960’s Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory Feast? Served in a box like a Terry’s chocolate orange. You know:

3. A lot of people told me they thought Heston’s Meat Fruit recipe was revolutionary. I’d say evolutionary, supercharged pâté on toast for 2011.

It’s as good as they say. Weirdly, the creamy, savoury aftertaste reminded all three of us of those cheeseburger-flavoured Quarterback snacks. I’m not joking.

You don’t get enough grilled bread to deal with all the parfait though. We spread the remainder on our side serving bread, and preferred that combination. Try it.
 
 

Mains

 

Spiced Pigeon (£32.00)

 

As with all the mains at Dinner the sauce is what gives the dish it’s life and richness, cut through by those tiny onions. Delicious, tender.
 
 

Blackfoot Pork Chop (£28.00)

 

“The wagyu beef of pork”. Marbled fat spreads flavour through the meat, served pink and meltingly tender via a combo of Josper grill and sous vide-ing. The complex Robert Sauce is even better. If I’d been eating this in the privacy of my own home I’d have licked the plate clean. You would too.

It’s a big portion, you’re able to share some and still feel satisfied. Free side-dish of cabbage served under the chop as well, bargain hunters. If Beef Royale had been available I’d never have ordered this, an unexpected blessing. Incredible.
 
 

Roast Turbot (£32.00)

 

Textbook fish and meaty bounce from the cockles. Greatly balanced flavours, maybe needs a bit more contrasting texture. Wish I’d pinched more of this one.
 
 
 

Triple Cooked Chips (several at £4.50)

 

I’ve spent two years waiting for these. When we went to the Hind’s Head they were off the menu (potatoes were “out of season”, apparently!). Home experiments only ever produced badly-cooked, rather than triple-cooked, chips.

 

Crust is amazingly thick and crunchy like ideal roast potatoes but dryer, insides creamily smooth. I ordered far more of these than we could finish then ate everyone’s leftovers, laughing to myself with delight at each bite. They probably thought I was a lunatic.
 
 

Hispi Cabbage (£4.50) Carrots (£4.50)

Sorry, no photo. I was too busy stuffing my face. Cabbage is bright and tender, buttery carrots are nicely caramelised.
 
 

Desserts

 

Tipsy Cake (£10.00)

 

Yes. It’s all true.
 
 
 

Brown Bread Ice Cream (£8.50)

 

Bland and strange by itself, but get some of that salted caramel, a bit of lemon and dehydrated bread on your spoon and it becomes a thing of immense majesty and originality.

The standout dish of the entire meal. I preferred it to the Tipsy Cake.

(Note: Now changed to Malted Barley Ice Cream, which doesn’t sound nearly as fun.)

 

 

Baked lemon Suet Pudding (£8.50)

 

Smaller than you expect, but so intense you wouldn’t want more. You need every last drop of cream or it’s excruciatingly sweet. Lemon flavour very subtle.

 

I’ve never had it at the Hind’s Head to be able to compare, but is this a poshed-up version of Heston’s Sussex Pond Pudding recipe? Let me know please.

 
 
 

Tafferty Tart (£8.00)

 

They used to serve a version of this at the Fat Duck. Dinner’s version is about 3 times larger. Here’s how the two compare side by side:

 

I got this for our 3^rd diner who hadn’t eaten at the mothership. It’s very sugary, especially the sorbet. My teeth were tingling after the first mouthful. Strong flavours in each bite, I’d struggle to finish this portion by myself.
 
 

 

 

Heston and Ashley always max-out every aspect of their dishes. This dish might be a step too far. Chocolate is too bitter, passion fruit jam too sweet and crunchy biscuit base is rock solid.

Ginger ice cream can’t balance out the bitterness. I left the bar (no one wanted to share after their first bite) and just finished the ice cream. On it’s own it’s no more than an “interesting flavour”.
 
 
 

Earl Grey Ganache

 

Everyone loves Heston’s one-thing-made-to-look-like-another stuff. This is more convinvcing than the Meat Fruit. Fun too; your after dinner cuppa and petit fours in one.

The clever flavour pairing works brilliantly, but if you’re not a fan of white chocolate it can get sickly fast. Caraway seeds make the biscuit magically light.

Total bill: £265 including (non-alcoholic) drinks.

We all tried each other’s food and struggled to agree on favourites. Everybody liked everyone else’s dish more than their own.
 

 
 

Verdict

 

 

There’s no question that Dinner is overhyped. Evidence is in the frenzy of critics, deluge of blog reviews (damned bloggers!) and “Best Restaurant In The World” headlines. Dinner definitely isn’t the best restaurant in the world, just a fun, relaxed hotel restaurant serving 21^st century comfort food.

Heston might be famous for his cutting-edge Fat Duck dishes, Dinner’s menu is deliberately conservative. When I looked at our table’s plates of meat and sauce, potatoes and vegetables in the centre for sharing out, Dinner made perfect sense: it’s a masterful, high-tech English Sunday Lunch.

Lots of bloggers have been underwhelmed, probably expecting “Fat Duck comes to London” when the ambition is more Hinds Head goes 5 star. Look elsewhere for liquid nitrogen and fish ice cream.

Fat Duck influence is in cooking techniques, attention to detail and understanding of flavour. The history really isn’t more than fun inspiration and garnish: Rice and Flesh sounds exciting, Risotto Milanese less so. (c1600-style dishes have been on the FD menu for ages). As in Bray, Ashley Palmer-Watts’ kitchen is consistently masterful.

Of course there’s something more to enjoy at Dinner than just food and atmosphere: smugness. High prices and limited availability make Dinner reservations feel rare and exclusive. Half the pleasure seems to be just getting a table. Check out reactions to the @MatireD’s news of walk-in availability.

Those prices do risk spoiling the taste. Roast Marrowbone is just a remixed Fergus Henderson dish, but for twice what you’d pay at St John. Website-watchers will notice everything’s gone up by at least a quid recently. What are you gonna do, walk out?

Treatment was impeccable. The only sour note was that, even though we told it was a double birthday celebration (a lie) there wasn’t a single gesture toward this, not even a chocolate-stenciled plate. At Maze they’d give you a free tiny dessert with a candle to blow out.

In an opening-week interview Heston stated his biggest fear was the public’s expectation being much greater than the reality. There’s lots of better and more exciting restaurants in London, and for many Dinner won’t justify the hype, wait or cost.

I wasn’t disappointed by the fun atmosphere, nor underwhelmed by the brilliantly executed food. I’d happily go again, but that’s easier said than done.
 
 
 

Further reading:

There’s no shortage of blog reviews for Dinner by Heston. Those listed at the top of this post are all well worth checking out. For an interesting take on the less-hyped Set Lunch check out Aki Eats. The Millionaire Tart looks even better than the Fat Duck / Hind’s Head / Manchester ’07 ones.

And please make sure you check out the enviably talented Cumbria Foodie and his home-made version of the famous starter.

Tackling Heston’s first Perfection recipe to create the ultimate Spaghetti Bolognese.

More than the Fat Duck or Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental, Heston Blumenthal’s recipes for the home are what really excite me.

The ultimate Heston-at-home recipes (until the actual Heston At Home recipe book is released) are those from the 2006 – 2007 BBC series In Search Of Perfection. It was brilliant food TV, in-depth studies of the origins, ingredients and techniques for modern versions of 15 classic dishes we all love. And Baked Alaska too.

I can’t keep visiting the Fat Duck forever, so my plan to keep getting fresh fixes is to cook every single Perfection dish at home,  the main reason for starting this blog. All the Heston recipes from In Search of Perfection create that Fat Duck magic at home, with lots of domestic versions of techniques used in the restaurant. You have to create a makeshift vacuum chamber for Heston’s Black Forest Gateau recipe. Heston’s Perfection Chicken Tikka Masala recipe takes 3 days to cook.

Soon I’ll have a kitchen cluttered with soda siphons and pressure cookers. Heston’s Spaghetti Bolognese recipe is the perfect one to begin with – it’s the easiest of the lot. All you need is a knife and some pans.

Note: This is a very long post, nearly 3000 words, as befits a perfection recipe. I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.

 

SUMMARY

Recipe: The recipe for this dish can be found in either Heston’s original In Search Of Perfection book, or in Total Perfection, which combines the recipes from the first and second series of the BBC TV show.

Special Equipment: None

Special Ingredients: Sherry vinegar (most large supermarkets), Rustichella-brand Spaghetti (optional) star anise, coriander seeds.

Time: 8 – 12 hours (depending on how fast you can chop)
Cost: Under £20(£25 if you need to stock up on spices)

Serves: 6 (officially, but more like 4))
Difficulty: Medium

 

STEP 1: Prepping the veg.

 

Do you like chopping? Tough, because this recipe features lots of it. Remember when you watched Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals and wanted a Magimix because it made the chopping look so easy? I had an ache down the right side of my body the next day that made me want one even more. My knives are pretty good, as my chopping skills, but there’s loads of veg and getting through them all took over an hour.

I used to mock a uni mate of mine for putting carrot in his spag bol (though back then mine came out of a Heinz can). Heston uses quite a lot of carrot in his recipe. Who’s laughing now.

 

STEP 2: Prepping the meat.

 

This bit is even more gruelling: boning and *mincing* the “bastard” oxtail. I don’t have a mincer so this was done with a knife by hand, after two hours spent finely filleting the shreds of meat from the oxtails.Without a generous butcher (mine just laughed at the request) it’s a difficult, exhausting job. Turning a whole pork shoulder into 1cm cubes was a breeze in comparison.

Oh, for both of the first two steps you might want to have some finger-sized plasters nearby.

 

STEP 3: Frying the sofforito, onions and meat.

I juggled a few pans here to save precious minutes lost chopping.

For the actual sofforito you’re instructed to fry “until the raw onion smell disappears”, so that’s just a matter of stirring and sniffing. Something easy at last!

The caramelised onions take a bit longer. The addition of star anise is kitchen science all Hestonthusiasts will know about. The basic formula to that science is “Fried Onions + Star Anise = Meaty Flavour Compounds”.

You can genuinely taste the benefits right away; almost every one of Heston’s recipes that calls for fried onions uses this technique. Doing this regularly could mean a lot of cash spent at the supermarket Schwartz-aisle. My advice would be to go to an Asian wholesaler where you can pick up a lifetime supply in a massive sack of the stuff.

If you haven’t got any muslin to wrap the star anise in then find something, an old pair of tights if you must. Anything to avoid the risk of biting into a chunk of woody star anise in your finished meal. This is not pleasant, especially if you’re cooking to impress someone. I promise.

For frying the cubed pork and the “bastard” minced oxtail I broke out the cast-iron pan. I luckily got one ages ago for about 1/5th the normal price, but I’m quite lazy so it usually stays in the cupboard stacked under the much lighter frying pans. It’s useful for the next bit of kitchen science in Heston’s Spaghetti Bolognese recipe: The Maillard reaction. This basic formula: “High Heat + Meat = Roasted Meat Flavours”.

To be honest though,  if you’re that into Heston that you’ve ended up reading this blog  then you probably don’t need me reminding you of the science).

This is best done in batches – so there’s enough room for all the ingredients to touch the bottom of the pan. It may double the cooking time for this step, but there’s no point in cutting corners when the whole point of this recipe is to go the extra mile for the ultimate result.

 

 

STEP 4: Slow cooking the meat.

It’s (surprisingly) white wine you deglaze the pan with, and add it to the pot with whole milk. The final ingredient here is nothing more exciting than water. I’d have expected stock for a fuller flavour but I guess it’s not necessary. Sorry, Knorr. Then you just set the pot on the lowest possible heat for the next 6 hours. You might have better luck, but when I cooked this it smelled atrocious. The entire house reeked of rendering fat.

Warning: You do need to keep an eye on this, keeping the water topped up so the meat stays covered. Don’t do what I did and pop round to Declan’s to watch Frontière(s) then come home 4 hours later to find the top inch of the mixture bone-dry!

Even after 6 hours it was still a bit pale and sickly, not the rich red/brown delight I was hoping for. I started to worry I’d got the recipe badly wrong. Trust me (well, trust Heston) it will all come together at the end.

 

STEP 5: Prepping the tomatoes

There’s literally zero rest for you once you start the six-hour simmer. You need to get straight on with this next step.

Several steps, actually. The first being the bloody awkward business of briefly boiling and skinning the tomatoes. Fiddly and time-consuming, I hated it, but since tomato skin doesn’t break down it’s essential for the texture of the finished dish. Hey, you don’t have to do it every time you make a spag bol.

Scooping, salting and sieving the seeds is also a chore. This is our next lesson in kitchen science, and part of how Heston earned his PhD. Tomato seeds (or the pulp around them) are incredibly rich in umami compounds, this step gets the most out of them to help create a supremely rich, meaty dish. That’s an awful lot of salt there, though.

Heston talks about there being a lot of carrot in the dish, but at this point you need to add a third lot of onions along with the tomatoes. Hope you remembered them in your earlier chopping.

 

STEP 6: Cooking the tomatoes

Along with the onions the tomatoes will spend the next two hours in their pan, most of the time on a low heat.

Next comes the fun part: seasoning. There’s the spice bag, then all sorts of unexpected umami-rich ingredients like Tabasco, parmesan and, controversially, fish sauce. I’ve read a lot of comments from morons and thickos who claim these additions, especially traditionally Asian star anise and fish sauce, will ruin the taste or authenticity. These sorts of comments are pretty ignorant and miss the whole point of Heston’s Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese recipe. It’s not meant to be authentically Italian, it’s meant to be the ultimate, modern version of the British interpretation of the dish. And it’s allowed to use as many modern techniques and ingredients as it likes. Still, you backwards-folk are welcome to put your two-pence in the comments section.

The final part of this step did make me think twice though, pouring a massive amount of oil in to fry the tomatoes. If all that salt before didn’t worry you then this extra saturated fat should. Subway’s Meatball sandwich has got nothing on this recipe. Heston claims you can pour most of this oil off (it’s delicious with pasta). It is, but from the 50ml of oil I put in there wasn’t enough left to fill an egg cup, let alone this small beaker…

 

 

STEP 7: Putting it all together

 

 

At this point you’ll have tomatoes that have been cooked for two hours and meat that’s been on for six. After combining them, spice bags and all, you’ve still another two hours before your meal is ready. The first time I made this we didn’t eat until 1am. Though posing and lighting each stage of the process for multiple photos, from a range of angles, doesn’t speed things up.

After adding the two components together the result looks far from what you’d expect, it’s pale and thin, with a weak, insipid flavour to match. Again, trust Heston and the fat Duck development team, the next two hours will make all the difference.

Note: with only one hob going this is the best time to think about dessert. For the sake of chef continuity, and because chocolate can be the perfect thing to follow a rich, meat dish, we went with Heston’s chocolate fondant recipe. It’s relatively quick, only uses one hob and a couple of bowls, and gets cooked in the oven keeping your stove clear. There’ll be a Heston V Gordon challenge for chocolate fondant recipes soon.

 

 

STEP 8: The actual spaghetti

A good portion of the episode of In Search Of Perfection was dedicated to the sourcing of the actual spaghetti. The Italian original, Ragu a la Bologna, is served with thicker tagliatelle (Heston’s menu at Little Chef Popham features “Tag Bol”).

To keep the dish authentically British Heston still uses spaghetti for his spag bol. His preferred choice is from artisan pasta makers Rustichella. Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find this in Leigh Sainsbury’s.

Now I know all Heston’s In Search of Perfection recipes are a combination of history, technique and ingredients. Although techniques are what most of us associate Heston with (liquid nitrogen, 72-hour beef etc) the  series makes plain that the quality of ingredients is just as important – the Longhorn cattle from the steak episode being the best example. But at £8 a plus postage a pack of Rustichella spaghetti was one ingredient I wasn’t prepared to stretch to.

If you’re making this and feel like splashing out  you can find Rustichella spaghetti at Rick Stein’s website.

For the rest of us, the TV show stated that the two key elements in making the perfect pasta are shaping it through bronze dies and slow drying. Look for these details on the side of the pasta packets in the supermarket. In the UK Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Spaghetti, Tesco Finest, Asda Extra Special Linguini, plus any spaghetti from the Jamie Oliver range, all fit the bill. Let me know if you find any others.

The cooking process is the one mentioned before by Heston recipes featured in the Guardian and Times, as well as Heston’s Family Food recipe book. You’re meant to lift the pasta out of the water to stop it getting starchy, but you should pour away most of that water first to make life easier and avoid my slapstick performance with cooking tongs. Then slather it in oil and butter to stop it sticking together.

You can do all this while the finished sauce is off the heat and infusing in step 9.

 

STEP 9: Finishing Touches

After 2 hours of slow simmering that pale, thin sauce we left in step 7 will have reduced the a magnificently thick, richly flavoured consistency. But there’s a few final things to add. The bouquet garni, parmesan cheese, Sherry vinegar and, since this is a Heston recipe, lots of butter.

When we cooked Heston’s Christmas Dinner recipes (in a Heston V Gordon challenge) it was shocking how much butter went into the meal. This recipe asks for a slightly less alarming 100g of the stuff to be stirred in at the end.

Anyone who’s seen Heston’s other perfection recipes will be familiar with adding butter to finish. The Perfection Bangers and Mash recipe is covered in gelled butter at the end, Heston’s Perfect Chicken Tikka recipe has a cashew nut butter added to finish and for Blumenthal’s Perfect Roast Chicken you inject melted, chicken-infused butter into the cooked bird.

For Heston’s steak recipe? Blue cheese butter. His perfect chilli con carne? A Bloody Mary butter (or rich spiced butter if you go with the Waitrose recipe). Even his Baked Alaska recipe contains a spongecake that’s fried in butter before being incorporated into the final dish. Basically, if you’re a Heston fan you need to like butter.

The 2011 edition of the Good Food Guide suggests some of the Fat Duck’s dishes are starting to be excessively rich. When you read recipes like this you can see how that’s happened. Can chefs become immune to butter over time?

 

STEP 10: The Finished Dish

Assembly of the dish isn’t tricky as long as you’re careful. For the best presentation you’ll need a small knife or some scissors to snip away the stray ends of spaghetti. Disposing of these tiny strands will be particularly galling if you paid extra for the Rustichella stuff.

It is worth trying to get the presentation right if you can though – after all the love and care you’ve shown this dish in the ten or so hours it takes to cook you might as well put the last little bit of effort in. Make it a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds.

And try to be a bit neater than I was.

 

VERDICT

Heston’s Perfect spaghetti bolognese is exactly that: perfect. This recipe features every element, every flavour and every texture you’d expect from the dish, magnified and intensified. It’s a rich, meaty, unctuous dish whose multiple stages give it an incredible complexity and depth of flavour.

With it’s choice cuts of meat, seasonings and tomato-treatments, savoury umaminess reigns supreme. An object lesson in how unexpected ingredients can bring out the key elements of a dish. I copied a lot of this when trying to replicate the Shepherd’s Pie on Steroids recipe from the British Airways episode of Heston’s Mission Impossible.

And after all this rich meat the decadent, dark chocolate fondant was a perfect dessert.

If you only ever cook one of Heston’s Perfection recipes all the way through then make it this one. If nothing else, this “simple” pasta dish illustrates the best aspect of Heston’s approach to cooking: his ability to identify just what aspects are key to a particular dish and accentuate them. This is spag bol dialled up to 11.

 

 

NEXT TIME

I’d happily make this again, and the only changes I’d make for efficiency and health are:

1. Replace the oxtail with shin or cheek. Nearly as flavoursome, easier to handle.

2. Use tinned tomatoes. It’s cheating, but the tomatoes phase is a massive chore.

3. Less oil for frying the tomatoes. I didn’t use up all the (meagre) leftovers.

4. Omit the finishing butter. Tried without it & didn’t miss the richness. Plus, I care about my arteries.

5. Make twice as much, and freeze the rest. After all this work, why not enjoy more another day.

I’d still include every one of the herbs and spices though. Their inclusion, plus the slow cooking seem to be what give the dish it’s real depth of flavour and complexity. And along with the rich meatiness those were the stand-out features for me.

 

Further Reading

If you’re interested in this recipe make sure you check out the following:

Kok Robin: The must-read definitive guide to cooking this dish. Brilliant writing and photography.

Cairmen: A dedicated and detailed account of cooking the spag bol recipe. Worth reading.

Roast Potato: One of the internet’s top Heston fans (and outstanding UK blogger) cooks the dish.

Just Hungry: A concise and engaging take on the recipe, with an alternative version worth trying.

The Suburban Farmer: A great take on a simplified version of Heston’s recipe from an excellent blogger.

Heston’s Bolognese Sauce recipe: Alternate recipe from The Times still takes 8 hours, but it’s much easier to make.

If you liked this post, have tried the recipe yourself, or have an opinion on going to all this trouble for a humble spag bol then please leave a comment.