
The Heston protégé swapping snail porridge for simple salad
Having worked for Heston Blumenthal, the master of the complicated recipe, it is perhaps understandable that Thomas Straker wanted to keep it simple with his first cookbook.
While Blumenthal's Fat Duck Cookbook contains recipes for sardines on toast sorbet, salmon poached with liquorice and dishes requiring ice baths and dehydrators, Straker, 35, has one for a green salad.
In Food You Want To Eat, he has gone back to basics. 'Wash and dry the lettuce leaves well,' the recipe explains. 'Keep the leaves mostly intact, but rip some of the bigger ones.'
There is also, perhaps more helpfully, a recipe for the dressing — apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, extra virgin olive oil, garlic cloves (finely grated), honey, salt and pepper: 'Pour the dressing
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