I like Heston Blumenthal. I really do. He’s to thank for one of the best meals I’ve ever had (meat fruit, spiced pigeon and brown bread ice cream for dinner at the Royal Mandarin), I get through far too much Waitrose by Heston Earl Grey & Lemon Gin and he’s far more watchable than most of the other TV chefs.
But after the latest episode of Heston’s Great British Food (C4, 9pm, 8 May), I’m starting to worry he has what psychologists would call histrionic personality disorder. In Heston’s case this manifests itself as excessive theatricality and extreme attention-seeking behaviour, which screams: ‘Look how clever I am!’
And he is. The bombay mix-encrusted biryani, vacuum- injected tikka masala poussin and liquid nitrogen vindaloo mousse with sub-zero mango lassi chaser leave little doubt about that. To a point: while the food looked fantastic, Heston fell short of his goal of “telling the untold stories behind Britain’s favourite foods”.
That the onion bhaji and chicken balti were cooked up for the British has been told many times, but still Heston felt the need to rehearse all this again.
And instead of telling the less familiar story of how chillies, alien to India until introduced from the New World, came to become a staple of the continent’s cuisine, he chose to mess around in a greenhouse munching increasingly hot peppers, claiming the last one he ate was so hot it made his ridiculously huge glasses steam up. Perhaps he should leave the history to David Starkey and stick to cooking.
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