![]() The contents erupt into the box (and beyond). Clutching the hot cylinder, I point its nozzle into a large plastic food-box and depress the stainless-steel lever. After pouring 500g of melted Valrhona milk chocolate into the flask, I screw the top on and charge up the device with three cylinders of nitrous oxide. This is where the Kisag Cream Whipper comes into play. It turned out to be a triumph whose verisimilitude would have deceived even the most experienced Black Forest axeman.īuoyed by my success, I move on to the more serious matter of the aerated chocolate. Despite lacking a wood-effect painting tool, I use a spatula to contrive a wood effect of cocoa mix on madeleine sponge. In the meantime, I tackle the "wood-effect base". We then make the gelatinised kirsch cream, a white jelly that has to chill in the freezer for an hour. I have a Lemsip and gaze awestruck at the Kisag Cream Whipper (" Restaurant Grade Metal") and its 50 little gas torpedoes. It appeared to be gelatinised kirsch cream, but the recipe merely said: "Manoeuvre it on top of the chocolate sponge using a palette knife or fish slice." Where the hell did the white sides come from? And what do you use to put them there? A brickie's trowel?ĭeciding to cross this bridge when we came to it, we make the madeleine biscuit base and the flourless chocolate sponge. When combining the various strata that constitute the heart of the gateau, there was no explanation of a white layer that not only formed one of the strata, but also, according to a photograph, the sides of this construction. "Excluding illustrations, the recipe runs to eight pages and consists of six stages (I exclude the dried vanilla pod stalks). "I don't think our vanilla pods are plump enough. For example, no force on earth is going to make me slit dried vanilla pods to make "decorative stalks" for the cherries that embellish the finished gateau. Due to a combination of the aftereffects of flu and (more importantly) an alarming degree of physical ineptitude, I have been obliged to call on the services of my wife at numerous stages of this wholly preposterous task. Food should be fun." That glib motto echoes in my head as I pass hour upon hour engaged in pointless, fiddly, irksome, brain-numbing, insanely complex grind.Īt this point, I must admit that I am not alone in my assault on this gastronomic Eiger. Blumenthal breezily insists: "No food need be beneath contempt do it right and it becomes something wonderful. Dante's demons could not have devised a more ingenious torment. Back aching, temper frayed, I tot up how much longer it will take, according to Blumenthal's instructions.Another three hours! My spirits plummet. Every square centimetre is the result of hours of hard, finicky work.Īfter a day's grind, the basic construction of the dish is complete. He has taken a fairly straightforward recipe and endowed it with every possible fiendish element of complexity he could devise. Eight hours into cooking the dish, I now realise he is a devil. With a giant plate haloing his egg-like cranium, Blumenthal looks like a saint on the cover of his book, which accompanies a BBC TV series. What could be more German? Moreover, the label declared "Premium Quality". As the recommended Amarena Fabbri top-quality sour cherries in syrup proved a bit thin on the ground in south-east London, I came up with a clever substitute: Harvin brand Morello cherries in syrup from our local Lidl. I managed to get the last phial of liquid glucose from Boots. The same applies to "565g top quality dark chocolate (such as Amadei's Toscano Black 66 per cent)." I settled for Lesgrevil kirsch from Waitrose and Val-rhona chocolate from the Chocolate Society. Tap "Franz Fies kirsch" into .uk and all you get is Heston Blumenthal's recipe for Black Forest gateau. "It was something I definitely wanted to capture in my Black Forest gateau." Unfortunately, Franz Fies kirsch is unavailable in the UK. "I got a real hit of complex, intense cherry smell," trills the boy genius. ![]() Blumenthal specifies "50ml top quality kirsch (eg Franz Fies)" and includes a description of his visit to the Franz Fies production plant in the Black Forest. Though it was no trouble getting the 18 eggs, 515ml whipping cream, six plump vanilla pods and two sheets of leaf gelatin, other ingredients proved more problematical.
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