The BBC Good Food Show this year definitely lived up to its name.  There were hundreds of stalls, plenty of tastings and demonstrations.  We had booked our tickets weeks in advance and eagerly anticipated watching Heston Blumenthal in his Food Icon demonstration/show.  This year there was a great selection of stalls from the Farmers’ Market.

Here’s some of the tasting dishes we tried on the day.

Salt & pepper squid from Smith of Smithfield, panfried scallops from Theo Randall, duck from Kai Mayfair, chocolate fondant with green tea sauce from Sumosan

Clockwise from top left: Salt & pepper squid from Smiths of Smithfield, pan fried scallops from Theo Randall, chocolate fondant with green tea sauce from Sumosan, duck from Kai Mayfair.

Tuna with truffle oil from Sumosan, phad thai from Blue Elephant, ragú tortellini from Refettorio, salmon broth from L'ortolan

Clockwise from top left: Tuna with truffle oil from Sumosan, phad thai from Blue Elephant, salmon broth from L'ortolan, ragú tortellini from Refettorio.

After our satisfying lunch, we went over towards the demonstration hall for our much anticipated Food Icon session.  When the presentation started, my jaw dropped.  I couldn’t believe we paid to watch a rerun of his BBC Christmas TV programme on a projector screen.  Luckily it did improve when Heston began to give an insight to the journey he had with his restaurant The Fat Duck.  He talked about how to make the ‘perfect dish’ and how it is relative to each person’s taste, that is largely affected by the flavours of our childhood.  He also reckons that the easiest way to open the door to our memories is to bring out that nostalgia through his tasting menu.  To demonstrate what he means, we were asked to open up the envelope which we were given at the beginning of the session (and I thought it was going to be a draw for something! lol :) ) and put a Eucharist-like wafer into our mouths… it brought me back to my childhood memory of playing with my little cousin and we were pretending to eat baby powder…and yes, baby powder tastes awful.

Another highlight of the session was finding that sound actually has an effect on our taste.  Heston brought out some stats and figures from a study he did with a professor at Oxford University a few years ago.  He found that eating an oyster while listening to pounding waves and squealing seagulls tasted stronger and saltier than when eating an oyster while listening to barnyard noises.  This inspired his “Sound of the Sea” dish at his Fat Duck restaurant, which is made of seafood and edible seaweed served on a sand-like tapioca mixture with side-dish of iPod in a shell playing the sounds of breaking waves.  While this all sounds very convincing, I am yet to be converted ;)

Envelope containing a strip infused with frankincense and a thin wafer infused with baby smell, telling the beginnings of Fat Duck, watching his BBC Christmas show, making scrambled eggs ice cream.

Clockwise from top left: Envelope containing a strip infused with frankincense and a thin wafer infused with baby smell, telling the beginnings of Fat Duck, making scrambled eggs ice cream, watching his BBC Christmas show.

Even though the show was smaller than last year, we were happy we got to see the culinary alchemist himself  so it was definitely worth the trek to West London :)