Heston Blumenthal has unveiled a new recipe which makes use of rocks and pebbles from his garden, with the creative chef saying that the rocks contain silica, which acts as a thickening agent.
The pioneer of molecular gastronomy revealed the unique take on the recipe on his podcast, Heston’s Pod & Chips. He claims to have come up with the recipe while in his house in France, and had to trial several different types of rock before he landed on the right one.
“I got gravels and pebbles and rock and stuck it in a pan,' Blumenthal said. “I washed them first and put them in a pan with green beans, no salt, and they came out really green. It was a rather successful experiment. So the next time I made the soup I just chucked loads of pebbles in it.”
Blumenthal denies that the recipe is a gimmick, saying that the recipe works and leaves “no bitterness at all.” The recipe has some basis in history – the traditional Provencal dish ‘la soupe au calliou’ also contains a pebble.
On the podcast Blumenthal also recounted the time he licked petrified sloth poo at the Natural History Museum. He decided against using it in his cooking, describing it as “tasteless.”
