Heston's Fantastical Food Channel 4

[sledgehammer]

Don't know if any of you are watching it but i saw a trailer for next weeks episode and its about pubs beer and pub food
thought you might be interested Tue 4th Dec @21:00Hrs

Heston puts the fun back into pub grub, building a giant, edible pie and turning it into a fully functioning public house. He also makes a billiard table from cod, tartare sauce and pea mousse with pickled egg billiard balls.

For centuries local taverns have provided a wondrous mix of good times, hearty grub and beer that's famous the world over. But pubs appear to be in decline, with around eighteen locals a week shutting their doors for good. Heston visits the Welsh village of Minera, where he plans to put the fun back into pub life.

He makes a supersized pork scratching big enough to feed the entire village and a customised fruit machine that pays out its jackpot in snacks.

Having galvanized the villagers into making their own Minera brew, Heston creates a bar-snack beer foam featuring the essence of favourite snacks including Frazzles, scotch egg, honey-roast nuts and scampi fries.



Steve

 

[Frogfurlong]

I saw one of these programmes a few weeks back and thought how **** it was.
It was the commuter episode where he tried to inspire folk to eat breakfast.

I understand what the idea of the show is, to emphasise individual problems and use giant edible replicas of food to do it.

but the waste must be enormous.

Given that we are in recession the crass abuse of food in this way to highlight what could be construed as trival problems in comparison to people being evicted or having to use food banks just to survive is, to me, bordering on offensive. (The economic situation has been like this since 2008 so he can't say "I didn't know when I made the programme")

If he had done it 10 years ago when the economic bubble was at its height he would have been hailed a genius, but now he is a wasteful clown.

 

[BarnsleyBrewer]

I saw one of these programmes a few weeks back and thought how **** it was.
It was the commuter episode where he tried to inspire folk to eat breakfast.

I understand what the idea of the show is, to emphasise individual problems and use giant edible replicas of food to do it.

but the waste must be enormous.

Given that we are in recession the crass abuse of food in this way to highlight what could be construed as trival problems in comparison to people being evicted or having to use food banks just to survive is, to me, bordering on offensive. (The economic situation has been like this since 2008 so he can't say "I didn't know when I made the programme")

If he had done it 10 years ago when the economic bubble was at its height he would have been hailed a genius, but now he is a wasteful clown.

I thought exactly the same, I watched that episode and not seen any since..

BB

 

[PD]

yes the Have's don't really care or understand the Have nots of this world.
Tasteless utter ****.............





IMHO

 

[narmour]

I saw one of these programmes a few weeks back and thought how **** it was.
It was the commuter episode where he tried to inspire folk to eat breakfast.

I understand what the idea of the show is, to emphasise individual problems and use giant edible replicas of food to do it.

but the waste must be enormous.

Given that we are in recession the crass abuse of food in this way to highlight what could be construed as trival problems in comparison to people being evicted or having to use food banks just to survive is, to me, bordering on offensive. (The economic situation has been like this since 2008 so he can't say "I didn't know when I made the programme")

If he had done it 10 years ago when the economic bubble was at its height he would have been hailed a genius, but now he is a wasteful clown.

I thought exactly the same, I watched that episode and not seen any since..

BB

To be fair no one really has any idea what happens to the food after the show... most cookery shows have zero waste as all the crew are fed afterwards. As we can't tell for sure (unless anyone here is on the production team) what happens to the food after the show I think this sort of talk is unneccesary. What I find more offensive is the supermarkets which operate on such high wastage just to maintain the perfect shape of banana or carrot, or imposing rediculous best before dates which condemns perfectly good food to the bin. But that's a whole other can of worms.

 

[calumscott]

Meh. It's art not cooking.

Heston is an absolute lunatic and a brilliant (maybe the best) conceptual chef. His understanding of food, flavour and the socio-psychology of eating is second to none. He has transcended the function of sustenance AND the skill of top end restaurateurship and occupies a unique space in the world of food.

To see what he does merely in terms of sustenance is to completely miss the point. His function as a food artist is to push the boundaries (tick), inspire (tick) and re-engage people with food as produce rather than a thing in a box from a supermarket (tick).

Much the same as the best (and high profile) craft brewers are doing for beer...

 

[Frogfurlong]

not on the prduction team, however watching the programme Here at 16.38 - advert break you can see the mess made. I don't think anyone from the production team is going to be willing to eat that.


However I do agree about your can'o'worms

Meh. It's art not cooking.

I believe my point is made :lol:

 

[calumscott]

Meh. It's art not cooking.

I believe my point is made :lol:

Not really, no. I used to believe that art was simply a waste of whatever resource went into it - that was before I woke up to the fact that art isn't just to make walls less plain (although some forms do that quite well). However, nowadays with a good bit more worldly experience I reckon that if you don't have the people who are prepared to push the edges for the sake of pushing the edges then as a society we stagnate. The people that do that are, generally, artists and/or scientists.

In both cases one could argue that they are significantly wasteful. Heston's use of perishable food products on one hand, the billions of euros spent on the LHC to find a very very small thing that pretty much everyone had come round to accepting existed even before they found it.

Wasteful? For me, a categorical "no". When the inevitable proof of Higgs is worked out that should unlock some further mysteries and promote all kinds of useful stuff that we can't quite actually conceive at the moment. Good Thing. If Heston has, with his whacko food performance art, inspired a few people to choose a path of respect for food, food production and all that goes with it, hell, maybe even inspired someone to try to do it better than Heston himself, then that in itself is another Good Thing.

 

[sledgehammer]

:shock: I didn't realise i was going to open up such a heated discussion
Ok its possibly wasteful but i would agree its art and it inspires people to cook
i agree with the statement about people pushing the boundrys or we just stagnate look back at the industrial revolution what we managed to do
problem nowadays is people putting too many boundrys in the way so nothing gets done

 

[calumscott]

:shock: I didn't realise i was going to open up such a heated discussion

'tis the whole point of these things! Vive l'difference and all that!

Ok its possibly wasteful but i would agree its art and it inspires people to cook
i agree with the statement about people pushing the boundrys or we just stagnate look back at the industrial revolution what we managed to do
problem nowadays is people putting too many boundrys in the way so nothing gets done

Hear hear. I'm pretty sure that Armstrong, Aldrin and crew had those man-made and supposed boundaries lurking at the back of their minds as someone lit the vast amounts of rocket fuel under their bottoms...

: Here's to the nutters, mavericks and genii that keep us moving at least somewhere!

 

[Gayle]

He built a pie that was also a pub? That sounds very gross. Did the egg glaze protect it from the rain? Didn't wildlife try to attack it on all sides? There was bound to have been a huge increase in the rat population after that was sitting around a while :sick:

 

[sledgehammer]

He built a pie that was also a pub? That sounds very gross. Did the egg glaze protect it from the rain? Didn't wildlife try to attack it on all sides? There was bound to have been a huge increase in the rat population after that was sitting around a while :sick:

Go to the back of the class Gayle
face the wall and don't say another word
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

[sledgehammer]

BTT
so did anybody bother to watch it?
shame he didn't go into more detail about the brewing process


Steve

 

[Ukulele Kris]

I did, it's been one of the better episodes of the series... but it's nothing compared with Heston's Feasts, Heston's Search For Perfection, Big Chef Takes On Little Chef, and How To Cook Like Heston, all of which, as a foodie, I have taken something from (and have a couple of the associated books written by St. Heston)

This series has been hit and miss. I enjoyed the sweet shop one, and the breakfast one, and this one. The others, meh. Big fat meh.

 

[mattrickl06]

I loved how he took the lid off the fv and dipped his glass in it along with half of his hand.

How not to brew :grin:

 

[Hawks]

I loved how he took the lid off the fv and dipped his glass in it along with half of his hand.

How not to brew :grin:

The FV that was in the airing cupboard...

 

[BigYin]

Yep, I watched it, and thought the brew was highly likely to end up infected :lol:

Anyway, his idea of putting bar snack flavour foam on top of the beer was either genius or madness, but he did it extremely well.

The gimmick stuff, like the edible pool table and edible 'wall' - pies arranged like bricks, but not load bearing :lol: - and the GIANT pork scratching were all fine examples of his genius/madness

What DID annoy me though, was that I couldn't see how it could possibly do anything to help towards the STATED aim of the program - to help save the great 'British Pub' - the locals had already done that themselves by opening one in a large garden shed - and damned popular it looked too :

 

[Easy Peasie]

Firstly I agree that in the current times that we are in to me the programme does not evoke art but wastage of time and food which would otherwise be put to good use.
Secondly as an avid watcher of foodie programmes I can thoroughly say Heston has never inspired me to cook anything, I have always thought of his programmes as an extension of his restaurant and not really for everyday cooks which I find a turnoff. Who would want a pint with a frazzle tasting head anyway - complete drivel.