A SWEET SURPRISE

We’ve all had fruit pastilles — but Heston’s aren’t like the ones from the corner shop…

HESTON BLUMENTHAL’S Quantum pastilles

If everything isn’t quantum, what is it? I’ve always been fascinated by how our experience of food and flavour is influenced by our expectations, by what perspective we choose to take, and I’ve constantly been creating dishes that reflect that fascination. Looking back, I realise I always had what I now think of as a quantum perspective on gastronomy. I just didn’t know to call it that.

These pastilles have their origin in my search, about 20 years ago, for suitable veg to use in savoury pâte de fruits. I settled on beetroot but struggled with setting it to the texture I wanted, so I kept increasing the acidity until a funny thing happened. Beetroot became blackcurrant. Or so it seemed. It was so uncanny I began serving it at the restaurant as a red pastille.

That’s the quantum perspective right there. Is the pastille beetroot or blackcurrant? We taste things all the time and let our mouths and noses judge what we are putting in our mouths. It’s a question of perspective.

INGREDIENTS (MAKES A BATCH)

• 510g vegetable juice of your choice

• 100g glucose syrup

• 13g tartaric acid

• 350g unrefined caster sugar

• 12g yellow pectin (see note)

• Granulated sugar, to coat

1 Pour 500g of your vegetable juice into a pan and add the glucose syrup over a high heat. While you are waiting for this to come to a boil, combine the remaining 10g vegetable juice with the tartaric acid in a small bowl. In a separate small bowl, mix together the caster sugar and pectin.

2 When the vegetable juice/glucose syrup mixture is boiling, scatter the sugar/pectin mix into the pan and keep an eye on the temperature you are aiming for, which is 108°C.

3 Once at temperature, stir in the tartaric acid mixture and remove from the heat.

4 Carefully pour the mix into pastille moulds and leave to set at room temperature for at least 12 hours.

5 Once set, carefully remove the pastilles and roll in granulated sugar until coated.

NOTE It’s very important to use yellow pectin (also called pectine jaune) to make these pastilles, not regular pectin powder. Alternatively, you could use 180g jam sugar (with added pectin) instead of the caster sugar and pectin mixture.

TIP You can use any vegetable, but beetroot, butternut squash and Romano peppers work well because they flip convincingly to blackcurrant, apricot and rhubarb respectively. You’ll probably need to juice about 1.2kg fresh, peeled vegetables. to yield 510g juice.

Recipe extracted from Is This a Cookbook?: Adventures in the Kitchen by Heston Blumenthal (Bloomsbury Publishing, £27)