Heston's Feasts Heston's fabulous feasting

Date Published:

17/02/2009

The inventor of snail porridge is back and this time he’s changing history with his food. 4Food quizzes him on his fascinating new show which seeks to celebrate bonkers dishes from the past

How did you come up with the idea for the show?

I'm really fascinated by historic cooking and the idea is that these programmes are recreating historic dishes - but it's my interpretation of the dishes. Otherwise I'm going to say, ‘ah well in Tudor times they did this’ and we'll get people writing in saying ‘oh no, they never did that’. So it's going to be more like, 'apparently they did this but I'm going to do this’.

I try to pull out some key elements of history - reasons why, the story behind the creation of the dish; it could be some king's favourite combination, it could be just something that captures just one element or characteristic of the period. The Victorian era loved things about titillation, so things like jellies were popular. I never realised the Victorians invented vibrators! They felt that - it's outrageous - but they felt that women became hysterical and the vibrator would relieve their hysteria and relieve their mental state. Imagine what they were made of… not the most comfortable things! It was really funny; we went to a vibrator shop, so you've got elements of that in it as well. The challenge was ultimately in turning it into a feast, a thing of wonderment. These really are opportunities of a lifetime.

Did you have a favourite period?

No. I'd say I liked different periods for different reasons. I loved Victorian because I love Alice in Wonderland - I think it's a fantastic, surreal story, I love the dark bits to it. The dark undertone to it and the way that Alice tries to apply a logical thought process to completely bizarre situations. There's an adult-kid thing in the story and the way that we never lose our inner child and the idea that through food we can actually create.

How have your guests reacted?

Some of the guests are not sure about the company and they're not quite sure what they're expecting. So in the beginning some of them have been really prickly and I've thought ‘ooh actually they're not going to like this at all’. There was one really prickly one. But by the end of it they were laughing like kids. It was brilliant and the fact that it had turned around – I really thought at one point we might have lost it, that I might have pushed them too far. That journey is fantastic.

Which show caused you the biggest headache?

The Medieval one, because it was outrageous. We did the four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie. We sprayed the birds with this kids’ hairspray. You can't use blackbirds because they're a protected songbird so we got an animal trainer who does the dogs for 101 Dalmations and the birds in Harry Potter. And he's got his own pigeons. So we sprayed the pigeons with this hairspray. The stuff doesn't hurt the birds but if you let them fly within 10 minutes they've just flown it all off. And we made a humongous pie with a hollow pie casing and put the birds in the pie, then lifted the lid up. The problem was, when you lift the lid up they were meant to fly out but that didn't really happen - they just stayed there. So we had to get the trainer to stand there at the other end of the room and get them to fly to him, otherwise they wouldn't have flown out of the pie. We'd actually made individual pies which were served as the birds were flying out.

Was it a liberating experience for you – or was it just like research you do for all your dishes?

Because I wasn't cooking through actual recipes that people could cook at home, it kind of allowed the shackles to be released and creativity became freer. When we were sat around talking [about the show], I suddenly realised television could become a great tool for research and development as well.

Feast begins Tuesday 3rd March at 9pm on Channel 4

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