The chef on his superhero power, why he’s fallen in love with cooking again – and the mysteries of water
My head is very sensitive to heat. I can tell the temperature of a room within half a degree between 18 and 24C by what my head is doing. The rest of my body is fine. Jay Taylor, who has directed a lot of my TV shows, said to me that it must be the worst superhero power: I’m Head Thermometer Man. So what do I do? I choose one of the hottest jobs – apart from glassblowing or feeding a steam-train furnace – that you can do: working in a kitchen. Now I’ve gone to live in one of the hottest places in France. I’m not sure what that’s about either. Perhaps I’m creating my own adversity so new life can grow or something.
I’ve fallen back in love with cooking. I’ve done more than 100,000 hours in the kitchen and, a couple of years ago, I’d just had enough. I sound like some old, retired gunslinger hanging up his gun, but I just felt like a hamster on a wheel. In the last six months, let’s say, I started not only falling back in love with it, but I’ve brought with that my past, all of the pantechnicon, loads of information, discoveries and techniques that I created over the years. Rather than putting so many ingredients in, which is what I did before, I keep it really simple: applying that to a fried egg or a piece of toast even. It’s a bit like if you paint, I suppose: you add more colours and then you put on another colour and it’s too much.
