A windscreen wiper on a food mixer?

Published Feb 17, 2013

Share

London - The news that Heston Blumenthal is to team up with Breville, the Australian kitchen products company, to become its “global brand ambassador”, sounds like a triumph of common sense.

After a decade spent faffing about on the wilder shores of food preparation - snail porridge, tangerine paté, a Hansel-and-Gretel house with edible roof tiles, a chocolate cake which requires 48 hours to make and involves a vacuum cleaner, an industrial sander and some wallpaper paste - Blumenthal has evidently come down to earth.

Because Breville makes solidly sensible devices that aren't susceptible to avant-garde experimentation: toasters, kettles, irons, slow cookers, stuff like that. It invented the sandwich toaster. No, seriously.

In the past Blumenthal has sometimes descended from his Parnassian heights for long enough to give us a recipe for cheese on toast (it involved, if I remember aright, rosemary, thyme, tarragon and “garlic wine”). So does this development signal that a new, less flighty Heston has emerged?

Sadly no. When a Canadian newswire service asked him which Breville products he liked best, he revealed that he and the designers have been “creating” together: “I love the windscreen wiper on the mixer as it makes baking so much easier…” he said.

A windscreen wiper on a food mixer? Hello? How about attaching a barometer to one as well? And a mini-TV?

“But I guess overall I'd have to say the Tea Maker,” he continued, alluding to a new Breville device that boils water in 45 seconds. “I just love watching the basket going up and down.”

The basket? Oh dear. The mad molecular-foodie seems to have evolved into a mad inventor. And soon he'll have a staff of Australian henchmen at his beck and call in a laboratory. Anything could happen.

Stand by for the digital Hostess Trolley which will mix White Lady cocktails and make saucy conversation while serving vegetables. Or the Alarm Clock and Tea Maker which will pluck your eyebrows and clip your toenails while waking you up… - The Independent

Related Topics: