This is the book of Heston Blumenthal's hugely successful television series Feast. Having already recreated the impossible 'Drink Me' potion from Alice in Wonderland and reinvented Henry VIII's mythical 'Cockentrice', Heston is back for a second series of 6 incredible new feasts inspired by history, literature and legend.
Each chapter charts the realisation of a feast, with its challenges and ideas, culminating with the final recipes. This time, the feasts are based on themes which range from the whimsical to the phantasmagorical: Willy Wonka Feast; Fairytale Feast; Edwardian Feast; Gothic Feast; 1970's Feast; and, Feast of the Future. Heston stretches all these themes to the limit of culinary possibility. Delving into the dark fairytales of the 'Brothers Grimm', he creates poison apples, transforming pumpkins and Edwardian gingerbread houses with sugar windows. Dr Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham would tempt even Sam, while Roald Dahl's Lickable Wallpaper is an interior designer's gastro dream. In the 'Feast of the Future', we are introduced to the Futurist Cookbook which advised 1930's housewives that they should be dishing up 'Italian breasts in the sunshine', a recipe which Heston has resuscitated in all its scandalous glory.
Feast is a mind-boggling and mouth-watering foray into the realms of the imagination. With characteristic inventiveness and attention to detail, Heston creates glorious feasts the likes of which the rest of us can only dream (or read).
