In Search of Perfection - 1 ª Season

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In Heston's view, the black forest gateau that most know as that dessert has devolved into something totally inedible, but that it had to have evolved from something really special. He starts his journey of what he considers the classic black forest gateau from its home in Baden-Baden, Germany. Because of its origin, what he sees as the primary ingredient is not the chocolate cake itself but rather kirsch. His creation of the perfect black forest gateau is a six layer concoction of a biscuit base, fruit compote, flour-less sponge cakes, jarred sour cherries, mousses and whipped aerated chocolate, the latter which requires a vacuum cleaner and a space saver storage bag to create. The crowning kirsch glory of the dessert needs to wait until it's served.

Heston starts his search for the perfect steak in the most unusual of locations: a strip club in New York City which a friend told him serves the best steaks. In their cooler where the meat is aging - the most important aspect of the whole process - is a good smell of blue cheese. In cooking his perfect steak, Heston has to decide which cut from which breed is best. "Supermarket steaks" are generally inferior to higher grade product, which is why he believes most people prefer more flavorless but tenderer fillets. But he instead chooses a forerib of beef from a Longhorn cattle. What the cow is fed over the course of its lifetime is equally as important. To cook the steak, he slow cooks a roast before flash frying individual steak portions from that roast. As an accompaniment, he chooses to make a mushroom ketchup, full of umami flavor that compliments beef so well. The final touch is injecting that essence of blue cheese that he smelled in the meat cooler. For his iceberg lettuce salad, he provides tips for keeping the lettuce crisp.

In his quest to make the perfect fish & chips, Heston first returns to a childhood haunt - a fish & chip shop in West London - his first time there since age eight. He realizes that the fish & chip culture in England is as much about the ambiance as it is about the food. Not being able to control ambiance, he focuses on the food. For the fish, the travels to Cornwall to test local varieties. His fish of choice, turbot, is an unusual choice and one that offers its own challenges. Because turbot is a flat fish, he has to figure out a batter that cooks as quickly as the thin fish fillet, yet still remains crispy. He turns to the Japanese and tempura for inspiration. For the chips, he ultimately wants to find potatoes that have 22% dry matter, which is the perfect percentage for good textured chips. However, measuring dry matter at home is a virtually impossible proposition, and thus he has to rely on potato variety instead.

The first problem that Heston has in creating the perfect pizza is that everyone has a different ideal of what the perfect pizza is. As such, he decides to create what he considers the perfect margherita pizza - a thin crust pizza with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil as its sole toppings. His first stop is to taste classic Italian pizza in Naples. He feels the primary key to the best crust is the type of flour used. For the tomatoes, he has the additional problem of wanting to use what is available from the average British supermarket as opposed to the fresh San Marzano tomatoes local to the area around Naples. He feels he needs to replicate the commercial canning process of store bought tomatoes at home. But the biggest challenge is trying to replicate an oven twice as hot as most home ovens, and to have that oven have even heat distribution on the top and bottom.